Gayle Forman Quotes

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.

We get the impression through film and TV that Americans are violent gangsters with guns or upper-middle-class people in romcoms. I really liked the people. They were really warm. They could have been Brits. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

In America, funny women are allowed to be glamorous and funny, but over here, you're not.

You know the Dutch, they're always a bit funny... some of them.

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

Every country needs another country to make fun of.

Only two groups of people intimidate me absolutely: salespeople and the French.

Not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there's everything. There are violent persons of this religion.

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.

Revolt, it will be said, implies violence; but this is an outmoded, an incompetent conception of revolt. The most effective form of revolt in this violent world we live in is non-violence.

Foreigners have souls; the English haven't.

The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi.

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy.

Saw myself naked in front of a mirror a couple days ago - that's not the joke, that's what we called the setup. I saw myself naked, and I said, 'Holy cow, I'm 'The White Man.' I've heard a lot of bad things about you, cracka.

I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?

I'm afraid of Americans.

Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.

Americans give you the violence, Europeans give you the sex. I think people have been saying that since the 70s. And I think it's kind of pathetic that Americans are still stuck - on the shock value of violence, when sex is such a natural thing for everybody.

Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, naïve, optimistic, gullible. In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles.

You know why the French hate us so much? Thay gave us the croissant. And you know what we did with it? We turned it into our croissandwich, thank you very much.

Prejudice is more violent the blinder it is.

I don't like American girls. They're very conceited, you know. In Europe they're more pleasant.

Why is she afraid?" he asked. "She's not Anjin-san. Just a little nervous. Please excuse her. She's never seen a foreigner close to before." "Tell her when the moon's full, barbarians sprout horns and fire comes out of our mouths like dragons.

My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life. My heart is in helping people and in the less materialistic side of things, but there's the side of me that's more polished. If I were to live in Africa, serving the poor, the number-one thing I'd miss wouldn't be running water or electricity—it would be style...being able to get dressed up and feel beautiful.