Paul Gallico Quotes

Canadians are more polite when they are being rude than Americans are when they are being friendly.

I am in the habit, like most British people, of holding the door open for people. But in the U.S., people don't understand it. You get odd looks or doors slammed in your face.

I don't know if my sense of humor goes over Americans' heads.

English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness.

I think Americans have always been pretty outspoken. I always found that if you had emotions in England, it's like, 'Here's a cup of tea.'

Growing up in the South, we say 'Yes Ma'am' and 'No Ma'am.' Here in Hollywood, people get offended.

As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken.

When you go to that other country you realize that in France and in England, you don't ask somebody what they do for a living when you meet someone. A lot of the obvious things, the shortcuts we take in America - in America you can talk about money all you want. You can ask how much they make, rent they pay, how much their house costs and how much their car costs, and they'll feel comfortable telling you. But it's scandalous to ask anyone in England or France a question like that.

Americans really don't understand the Japanese nature, but it's not an easy thing to understand.

I am terribly British. Especially in the eyes of Americans. I drink several gallons of tea a day, I'm often excessively polite and it's only through many years of expensive and painful dental work that I don't have bad teeth.

At the end of the day, flirting is a pretty universal language. Americans are more direct. British people are more indirect about everything

The British vice is overthinking before we speak, which is really annoying. I love the way that, in America, people are more straightforward. The American vice would be sometimes speaking too loudly. You can always hear American people on the trains!

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

The British vice is overthinking before we speak, which is really annoying. I love the way that, in America, people are more straightforward.

When one is polite in German, one lies.

You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.

The Americans are so much more positive. They are much more in love with success. In Britain, they're a fairly envious bunch, and they love it if you fail.

The Japanese are human beings like the rest of us, but they will strongly resent this insinuation.

The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.

It is terribly rude to tell people that their troubles are boring.

I had a feeling about what I wanted to say, and I wasn't really qualified to discuss real things out of America because I didn't grow up there.

That was very rude of me.” “Think nothing of it. You’ve done worse.

There's an underlying puritanicalness in America that is not that different to the prudishness of Britain - it just manifests itself in different ways.

I need to conduct myself differently in different communities. In my experience, the journalistic conventions - you know, I'm the reporter, you're the subject, the interviewee - actually tend to hold steady much more consistently in rural Africa than they do in the American inner city.

Because of their cuisine, Germans don't consider farting rude. They'd certainly be out of luck if they did.