Rudyard Kipling Quotes

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.

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.

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.

I grew up in Africa surrounded by a lot of culture. It's made me aware that the world is a big place.

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.

I find it very beautiful to work in different countries because I see the mentality differences there. It is so rich, one always carries forward something.

China was the first time I truly felt like an outsider. I fell in love with the process of trying to become intimate with the culture.

China is a company of contradictions. Nothing is what it appears to be. We have to be extremely respectful when we go overseas.

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 always say the diversity, and culture is the one thing I love the most about the U.S. How you can travel across one borderline and you end up with this whole new set of people that I find super-interesting and great on tour.

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.

The English are very exotic to me.

Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what's right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.

Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.

Africa doesn't leap on you immediately; it seeps slowly, and it's incredibly important to be respectful and humble there.

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.

My mum and dad were speaking all the time about, 'In Sudan we do this,' and 'In Egypt we do that,' so I was very aware of cultural differences. I was confused growing up; it gave me a feeling of being an outsider watching others. But I think this is good for a writer.

When you visit a foreign city you are in it, but not of it, separated by a glass wall. Once, while a student, I was getting dressed in my ground-floor room when a family of Italians crossed the grass to watch, as if I were laid on for their amusement and instruction.

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.

One of the great ambitions is to discover the diversity of the world, to discover who inhabits the world.

I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.

Some Russian ballet master woman said there's no culture in America, but if you look you can find interesting stuff in this country, don't you think?

I could do one show after another in China for the rest of my life and still die ignorant. There's a lot of places left to go.