Michael Emerson Quotes

The films I enjoy seeing are those that reveal lives I was unaware of... in different cultures or whatever.

When I go home to England, my friends all make fun of me for sounding American.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.

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.

The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language.

The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters.

I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.

Even when well translated. can we really understand what other cultures are talking about?

It's difficult to identify why two cultures will react differently to the same sport.

When you go to another country, you can work with different players in different situations, in a different culture.

I've largely focused on Japan my whole career, so I was interested to see how my music would be received by people of different backgrounds, religions and cultures.

The juxtaposition of India and Australia is such a great one to explore.

I got to travel to some pretty awesome places, learn other people's customs, and see what works in their world differently than in ours.

When I was in Russia I found that I thought I was going to give these people that I was interviewing a whole bunch of choice in terms of what they could drink while we were chatting.

I've been in situations like in Tokyo where people sang my song word for word and then when the music stopped, they couldn't speak to me. I've seen the music break the language barrier.

I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)

The people of the two nations, French and English, must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other's wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of language and race. It is God's own method of producing an entente cordiale, and no other plan is worth a farthing.

The population increasing, some of it could be in countries we haven't thought of making art in. I've never entertained making comedy in China. Like what world is that? I don't know how they would perceive art or sketch comedy. It's not a matter of intellect; it's a matter of language.

So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.

The spirit of seeking understanding through personal contact with people of other nations and other cultures deserves the respect and support of all.

The organic fundamental error of humanism was that it desired to educate the common people (on whom it looked down) from its lofty stance instead of trying to understand them and to learn from them.

That's something that I'm trying to do in my work, to send a message to western people. They're the ones who are completely disconnected.

If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York.

People who speak the same language can hate one another as easily as can people who speak unrelated languages.