Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as 'the bizarre'. Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else.

Going to Russia is going to be nothing for me. I'm going to treat it like it's the U.S. because, at the end of the day, it's one man, one ring.

Going to the U.A.E. for the first time was a real cultural shock. Everything was different. People didn't speak my language, it was all new, a huge change. But I loved it.

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.

All I know is that every time I go to Africa, I am shaken to my core.

I think it's a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

This might sound really foolish, but when I came to Edinburgh in 1988 I had spent nearly all my life living south of Bristol, and I was just amazed that a city like Edinburgh was actually in the British isles.

It was very liberating, living in a foreign country, a place where everything was new and strange - the food, the customs, the climate, everything.

I can't see America any other way than with a European's eyes. It fascinates me and terrifies me at the same time.

When we arrived in Japan in 1988, we were not prepared for the overwhelming support shown to us.

The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.

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

I'm always struck when I go somewhere I've never been before, especially if it's in my home town, by just how different the atmosphere can be, and how disorienting it can be - especially if there's any kind of trouble.

Everyone thinks England and America are the same, as we have the same language, but I felt like an alien as an English person living in America.

England was incredibly dull and everything exciting seemed to be in America.

When you arrive in L.A. as an Englishman, you might as well be on the moon. People just don't understand you if you speak too fast, and most people there think you're Australian. Ordering was incredibly complicated. I was speechless.

I had been coming to America very frequently for many, many years, so I had plenty of exposure - and maybe the best kind of exposure, because I think first impressions are very important. Maybe I notice stuff that is just subliminal to people who live here all the time.

An English man does not travel to see English men.

There's so many funny things to say about being with Charlotte. I've worked on a few bits about it - not to be indiscreet but because the shock of culture and values is so interesting.

The thing that scares us the most is when familiar things operate in unfamiliar ways.

When traveling, we continually are 'discovering' what our day will be. We are in a new environment, perhaps a different culture, interacting with strangers who might have different priorities than we ourselves have.

I think going to another country and being able to evolve past my thinking and what actually went on in America was a little bit different from what athletes experience here in America.

Everything in Asia is a culture shock, it's very different from North America, but it's great to be forced into a situation to meet new people and learn new techniques.

I was just stunned when I came to America. I didn't know anything about rock music or football, and I felt very out of it... America was like a foreign country to me at first.