Simon Hoggart Quotes

In Europe, I am an outsider. I don't really understand anything that I am seeing. I can be welcomed into people's homes, I can be met with suspicion, I can be taken somewhere else altogether. There is always wonderment there for me, even if the person I am photographing may not see it or be aware of it.

The English are very exotic to me.

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

I find it really liberating to be in a place where I am a foreigner in every way. I've lived with this all my life - this divide, this bifurcation. And in Italy, I don't feel it. There's none of that tension, only the expectation I place on myself to speak the language well. I find it relaxing. Something drops away, and I observe.

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.

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.

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 make it my business to see or do something cultural in every place I go to. If you don't, you'll get into a state of constant despair.

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.

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 really knew when I started photographing I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.

I don't think anyone could write about another culture and get it 100 percent accurate.

I'm more of a culture hummingbird.

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.

It was nice to be in my own country, where I didn't need a translator or a driver. Where I didn't need to figure out cultural references or what hijab I needed to wear to cover my hair.

Seriously, some Americans just shouldn't leave the country.

It's always overwhelming when you come to another country and you're embraced in such a positive way.

I'm a culture vulture, and I just want to experience it all.

I'd like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me.

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.

In some ways England is more liberal than France, but I also find it more intrusive. But when you go abroad you have to accept the ways of where you live. I have to respect that.

When I am in Egypt, I am along for the ride - I am a privileged outsider, but an outsider nonetheless.

If you go into a country, then you’re going to have to do something about it, and that is hard–harder than invading.