Cultural Embarrassment Quotes

I do one accent - my own. I can make it louder or quieter. That is the sum total of my vocal range. I thought I could do an American accent until I tried it in front of an American - the expression of horror is still burnt onto my retinas.

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

I'm actually embarrassed to tell people I'm Russian these days, because it's become such an awful place.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

I was Persian-American, but I hated bringing Persian food to school. I just didn't want to stand out in that way. I wanted to be like everybody else.

Sometimes when Australians go overseas, it's as though the 'Aussie' is refined out of them. I don't know why. It's never happened to me, because I'm really proud of it. I'm not embarrassed about where I'm from or who I am any more. I know who I am. I don't fit in everywhere, but I know where I do fit in.

Tell me, why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognise our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?

While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.

England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.

After all these years, it's still embarrassing for me to play on the American golf tour. Like the time I asked my caddie for a sand wedge and he came back ten minutes later with a ham on rye.

Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.

Why get excited over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery.

If England has any dignity left in the way of literature, she will forget for ever the pitiful antics of English Literature's performing flea.