Irvine Welsh Quotes

Most Americans I play for are clueless as to who Richard Ramirez was, so you can imagine how audiences in Portugal react. I'm not saying they don't enjoy the music; I'm just saying they're a little lost on some references.

There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.

The music wasn't going to happen, and I realized I had read so little. I didn't know my way around any century. I was very under read.

That is something that I always want to do when I arrive somewhere is to know about the culture of the country, about the club and make sure I know what it takes to wear the jersey.

The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Increasingly, to dismiss any popular artistic style is seen as the worst kind of snobbery. And snobbery, it goes without saying, is unacceptable in a diverse and democratic world.

American teachers have one indisputable advantage over foreign ones; they understand the American temperament and can judge its unevenness, its lights and its shadows.

For a journalist who covers the Muslim world, we have responsibilities to be familiar with that culture and to know how to respond to that.

Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.

I feel quite confident that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are growing 'dumber,' if what you really mean to say is 'less culturally literate.'

Whatever country you go to, you need to definitely follow the rules. So I believe it's very important for people, wherever they go, any immigrant should know or should try to learn something about the culture.

I feel that I have an impractical and deleterious snobbery about the relation of literature to the market. I thought, 'I've become the kind of crap you buy at airports!' It was exciting, but it was not a fantasy I'd ever had.

There's nothing wrong with anybody from any other country having a perspective on the British royal family. It would be interesting. But I just doubt that they would get the dialogue right.

It's funny because I think that genre literature can be looked down on by literature literature. And I like that! I like being scorned; I like people looking down their noses at us a little bit... It gives us a little chip on our shoulder.

In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.

Without knowing about flexibility, one cannot work out strategies to deal with the enemy and prepare for changes, and without knowing about the foundation of one's own culture, one would be contemptuous of the Confucian ethical codes.

People don't realize how black people, minorities, women as well, all their lives, they have had to make the effort to understand everybody else. All my life, I've known American culture very well. I probably know American literature more than the average American.

South America was amazing, very powerful. We didn't imagine they like K-pop there and they loved it!

I think the best part of learning a language is that you can see the country's culture through the language. And it gives you different levels of understanding of that culture when you really try to dig in and learn it.

I think it's important to learn about the culture of the place where you live.

I think when you move to a country like the U.S., you need to understand the culture, to understand how people see the game, and adapt yourself.

I hope K-dramas can make inroads into more Asian countries.

We should see to it that our people are steeped in a real knowledge and understanding of our national culture.

Those big-shot writers ... could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.