Irvine Welsh Quotes

Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.

Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.

We just kind saw the images and knew the cliches, so to have the opportunity to go there and learn something about Russian music and about Russian people and to see things apart from being a tourist.

My wife is French, and so I get to see America through her eyes, which informs a lot of little moments. It means I can poke fun at very particular things about us.

Travel is the only way to get empathy for other people's mindsets - to know their struggles and what they're drawn to.

The unknown makes people uncomfortable. And even living in a city that's as cosmopolitan as New York City is, there's so many things I don't know about other cultures, even though I encounter other cultures - maybe even 18 or 19 of them - when I get on a subway car every day.

I now talk to different cultures, and I hope that I can bridge those gaps and differences between us. It's an adventure, a dream... I feel like I'm on an anthropological mission.

There's a kind of integrity to being an observer of a culture. I think Canadians have that privilege innately. We are, like, the observers of the American culture.

The experience of travelling, getting familiar with other languages, other cultures definitely helps. It makes you a better person.

I've been exposed to so many different cultures.

Colombian culture has had a huge influence on me and taught me a different way of looking at things - I was always different from the people I went to school with, and I learned to embrace that.

I have always been intrigued by other cultures, and traveling to foreign lands has always been a part of my personal passion for learning about our world.

The only diversity in the Brits is with the Americans. I've been saying this for a while: for our country to do good, we need to embrace our country.

I grew up surrounded by all types of cultures - French, Indian, Arabic - a melting pot of cultures, sounds, foods, people, and religions. It opened my eyes early, and I'm grateful for that. It's not about success in one area; it's about exploring the world musically and spending time in those places whenever you can.

But what I'm very interested in, whether it's writing, whether it's hosting a show, whether it's cooking food, I'm just into the discussions of identity, culture and the politics of culture.

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.

I thought I was benefiting the Indians as well as the government, by taking them all over the United States, and giving them a correct idea of the customs, life, etc., of the pale faces, so that when they returned to their people they could make known all they had seen.

Growing up in any big city, you get exposed to so many beautiful cultures. I've grown up with a lot of open eyes around me that's influenced my eyes to open.

You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture.

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.

Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that.

The two cultures of East and West are very different, and the priorities are very different. So when you understand that - if you are from this side or this side - when you understand that the other is different than you, and you respect these differences, you can build communication.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

The films I enjoy seeing are those that reveal lives I was unaware of... in different cultures or whatever.