Cultural Insights Quotes

The 'EU in a Nutshell' is a miscellany of facts and anecdotes about the system which rules us. It's a book you can delve into in pursuit of a particular fact, or crack open for entertainment at virtually any page.

In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction.

I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture.

"Study Bible" is the expression used for Bibles that include significant explanatory notes, usually at the bottom of the page, sometimes in the margins. Often a Study Bible will also include some brief articles, photographs of geographical and archaeological sites, fairly extensive maps, and charts that summarize a lot of information.

The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.

The secret to global investing is gaining an insight into the hopes and desires of the people who live and work in the countries you invest in.

I come from a protected environment of a Juhu house, and I wasn't exposed to life as shown in 'Highway'. It's not that I'm a snob, but I was cocooned from the reality of life. The film made me aware of life and myself.

Githa Hariharan's fiction is wonderful-full of subtleties and humor and tenderness.

As far as benefits to reading historical novels, there are several! For one thing, you learn about life in another era. Secondly, these novels help us to develop a deeper understanding of the legacy of women who came before us and the strides made by our ancestors.

I think being a foreigner and talking about Hollywood allowed me to use some cliches and some references that an American would maybe not use.

What I would give, I thought, to have been present as Elizabeth Keckley measured Mary Lincoln for a new gown, to overhear their conversations on topics significant and ordinary, to observe the Lincoln White House from such an intimate perspective. From that moment, my interest in their remarkable friendship was captivated, and it never really waned.

I think Indians will pick up on a lot of the direct commentary on Delhi, which Americans will obviously miss, while Americans might get more out of watching pop-culture play out in unusual ways in a foreign country. Who knows?

If you approach India in the right way, you have so much to learn there about people, and there's so many people. It's such an extraordinary setup, and it's so bewildering how it manages to get through somehow, you can only wonder at it.

It may be hyperbolic to declare that Shakespeare teaches us more about being human than all the natural scientists combined.

My best sources are my travels and my collection of National Geographic.

I'm familiar with the Palestinian mentality, the culture, religion, and when I had information coming in on a daily basis: secrets about personal lives, politicians, what they are hiding from their society that most people don't see, I started to see the picture in a different way.

The arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor.

I don't see a lot of studio executives caring at all about what the culture is telling us. They think they make the culture. They're not out taking the temperature of things and using the results of whatever sort of cultural surveying they're doing to make movies. They're interested in doing things that people are already comfortable with, and taking those properties and filling them.

However hard you might try, you can never understand a market like a local person would.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

If you look at that incredible burst of fantastic characters that emerged in the late 19th century/early 20th century, you can see so many of the fears and hopes of those times embedded in those characters. Even in throwaway bits of contemporary culture you can often find some penetrating insights into the real world around us.

A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.