Kevin Macdonald Quotes

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

If I had not been coached well about how to deal with a culture and a set of values that were foreign to my own, I would not have been able to be successful.

When I moved from Canada to Korea, I experienced a massive culture shock. I wasn't familiar with Korean culture at all and was very surprised at the hierarchical elements of Korean culture. However, at the time I was determined to succeed so I became a sponge and just soaked in everything I could.

At about the age of seven … I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather: how lovely it was that the sun had come out. This despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria; we didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.

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

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

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.

There are cultural issues everywhere - in Bangladesh, Latin America, Africa, wherever you go. But somehow when we talk about cultural differences, we magnify those differences.

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.

I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching.

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.

China is a company of contradictions. Nothing is what it appears to be. We have to be extremely respectful when we go overseas.

Foreigners are not like the people I am used to here.

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

If you go in Spain, you have to play with another style. The English culture is the English culture. If you come here, you have to play in this style.

There's a kind of integrity to being an observer of a culture. I think Canadians have that privilege innately. We are, like, the observers of the American culture.

I was with a Russian family, and I couldn't believe that the grandparents in Russia, first of all I was shocked and delighted to find that the Russian family that I'd been told was so different from the American family, was exactly the same.

Others think their American ways will work in other countries. That's not always accurate and can be disrespectful to the local culture.

I think when you move to a country like the U.S., you need to understand the culture, to understand how people see the game, and adapt yourself.

American and French culture are really, really different, but in a way it's funny.

We cannot just ape the west. What may be good in an alien country may be unpalatable in India.

I was very surprised when I first started spending time in America. The culture shock was something I wasn't prepared for. I had a lot of work to do to try to begin to understand this enormous and complex country that I thought would be an easy process.

It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.

If you move here from somewhere else, I often think if I move to Germany, for example, or if I move China and I go worship there I will understand and I'll be willing to give up a lot of my culture because I'm in somebody else's homeland. So I'm going to have to act German or Chinese, whatever that might mean.

We Americans look funny when we're in France because we don't travel, we are fairly un-cultured whereas Europeans go to Africa all the time because it's right there.