Sam Jaeger Quotes

I've never felt more American than I did when I moved to England. It becomes a real kind of part of your identity: "Oh, Ben. He's the American guy." I think when you say you're from New York you get a different reception then if you just say, "I'm American." So I'd always kind of make sure I was a New Yorker first.

It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides.

I thought, from watching TV and stuff, that America was one place. They only show you L.A. and New York. They don't warn you about Iowa.

What I've learned, traveling the country and doing book signings, Mama's biscuits - you know, somebody in Montana's got their version of Mama's biscuits, somebody in California's got their version - so it made me realize that we're not as regionalized as we think we are.

I think there's the apparent lack of subtlety and sort of make-believe anti-sensibility connected with American art. I think this is a style, and it does relate to our culture, and I think it would be anachronistic maybe to pretend to be involved with subtle changes and modulations and things like that, because it's really not part of America.

I don't really want the kind of Englishness that I have represented.

Whether you look at 'Glee' and its normalization of gay identity or you look at the work of Martin Scorsese and the Italian-American community, American culture is able to take these stories, which are seen as marginalized, and just turn them into American stories. And you don't think twice about it.

Part of my mission as an actor has been to define what an American is.

Culture is this thing that exists apart from our real life but is something we all have tacitly agreed to in America. And what film and television do, particularly in this country, is lay out the characters involved in this invisible agreement and dictate who and what can participate.

My favorite bad thing about 'Three Billboards' is its ambition to play around with America's ideological and geographical toys.

I think people in the north and the south and the east and the west, anywhere they come from, are just as interesting, and they're humans. They have the same realm of emotions that we all have. But I'm just more drawn to the Southern character and the different types, and Southern literature is so lyrical and so wonderful.

It's super trippy coming to America because we know everything about it - from music and film. I know what a Southern accent sounds like; I know what a New York accent sounds like.

I always feel like people misunderstand the difference between an Asian story and an Asian-American story. That's completely different, too. I have friends who grew up in Asia, and our experiences are so different. Even though we might look the same, I feel like being Asian and then being Asian-American is completely different.

I do know where I'm from, and I'm proud to be an Arkansan and to represent country music.

When I went on air and people heard my accent, they all said it was really nice to have a northern voice.

It's quite telling that the really big comedians - like John Bishop from Liverpool, Kevin Bridges from Glasgow, Peter Kay from Bolton - stand out with their strong regional accents.

I try to represent Africa and Cameroon as well as I can.

From jazz, the blues, country and rock to Hollywood movies, culture has in many ways been our greatest export (or our most obnoxious one, depending on your point of view).

Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don't matter.

I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handedly revolutionized the political, artistic, and historical discourses about America.

I paint American people, and I tell American stories through the paintings I create.

I think it's time we start chipping away at the stereotypes in Hollywood about the Middle East, and the Arab World, because it's one of the most beautiful regions in the world.

Denver's commitment to giving contemporary storytellers the stage is crucial to the American theater. That's something embraced by 'Smash.' We should be telling our own stories.

I would like to do more millennial, Latina, complicated stories.

When films are so hero centric, and directors are dancing to the tunes of the hero, where is the Kannada voice or song?