David Jason Quotes

I'm not anti-American. I've lived with Kenny, a Texan, for six years.

Americans who have travelled and who have English friends know we are not necessarily all baddies, but I think that seeing us being so incessantly nasty on screen has a drip, drip, drip effect on the rest of them.

My only experience with American things is through movies.

The monolithic view that many Americans have of Pakistani culture is as inaccurate as the monolithic view that many Pakistanis have of American culture.

From the American newspapers you'd think America was populated solely by naked women and cinema stars.

It's an Australian thing to be dismissive. We find that endearing. Americans don't. They believe what you say.

If I turn on the television, am I to believe that that is America? I'm sorry, I don't believe that's America.

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?

French people are strange about America, I think.

I had this fantasy that in a democracy the government was the population. So I came to America and got a big slap in my face... Americans were not what I thought. I thought I was going to see bastards and I saw nice people, very friendly to me.

The Americans love Aussies, but they're actually quite afraid of us at the same time because they think we're insane. Then they see our sports - league, union, and AFL - and that makes them even more worried.

American actors are all muscular, tanned, white teeth and they have this indestructible confidence. We British are all... Dare I say it? Pessimistic.

Americans are as they are. We have to accept this. Lots of Europeans forget that.

The image of one country and its people amongst peoples of another country is largely created and sustained by the media.

How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm overseas?

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.

American prejudices about Europe rarely surface in headlines, but they are real, pervasive, and ingrained.

When I was younger, I played a lot of upper-class English girls. Then I came to America, and everyone was like, 'She's very believable as trailer trash.'

When you see a Jamaica video, it's always the hood. Everybody in the video's got guns, and the world looks at it like that's what Jamaica's about. And it affects the economics of the music.

You grew up with America on the TV, and you think you know a place before you get there, and you have this idea of it in your head.

In mainstream media, everything gets turned into a stereotype of ourselves.

American public opinion sees Arabs as terrorists and has the desert-man image about them. I wish the Americans would see Arabs and Muslims the way I see them... but Arabs are losing the public relations battle in the United States.

When was the last time an Arab MK who appeared on television wasn't there in the role of the accused who is attacked by a skeptical broadcaster?

I'd hate to think that the stereotypical American is someone who just says 'Hi - bye' in conversation. That's how Europeans see us. And I'd like to think that not all of us are like that.

I don't really know what Americans are like. I've no idea. I know a few things about them. In my imagination, they have warm peachy hearts, whereas the English have horrible spiteful withered hearts - success in England inspires envy - in America, it inspires hope.