Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party.
Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida, but for a long time, the distance between our two countries seemed a lot greater.
Try to take for a mate a person of your own neighborhood.
I am very familiar with Hungary, because I grew up in Romania, which borders it.
I guess if you split the difference between the U.K. and the U.S., you would get Canada. But that's just due to proximity. Just because of distance, we get a lot more cultural spillover from America.
I grew up in northern New Jersey - the banlieue of New York - and I now live in Brooklyn. I am separated from my parents by about 50 miles, but really there is almost no distance between us. I speak to them nearly every day.
Palestine is only a stones throw away for a small Palestinian boy or girl.
In Canada you grow up - we're next to the United States. We're watching whatever you're watching. We're following your news. It's obvious that we are inundated with American cultural information and political information. Whereas the opposite is not true.
Colorado's right next to Utah - you know, Mormon Central.
Cuba is in some ways a perfect trading partner for Minnesota because there's so little overlap between what they are good at and they produce and what Minnesota is good at and what we produce. So it's a natural trading relationship, especially because they're so close.
Though many people said there is no joint border between Turkey and Montenegro, it feels like we are next to each other. We are in the same neighborhood.
If Japan had been near to either England or France, war would have broken out long ago.
In the 1970s, we got a Labor government that put more emphasis on trade with Asia; the Vietnam war ended, and refugees were coming in. We were more part of Asia than America and the rest of the world. There was the proximity, for a start - all these countries and cultures just north of us. It just made sense that that's what we were part of.
Interestingly, this character [Doctor Nash] is probably closer to me than somebody like the evil Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood or Lord Blackwood who wants to take over the world in Sherlock Holmes. This is a character that's English, he's based in London, and so it's closer to me than a lot of stuff I've been doing recently.
Taiwan and China are related ethnically and close neighbors geographically. There's no reason to resent or to fight against each other.
Mexico and the U.S. are bound not only because of the common border, but by a shared culture and history.
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.
For more than fifty years, Americans and Cubans have been isolated from one another even though Cuba is only 90 miles away from Florida.
We in El Paso and Juarez are literally one community. There's no separation; there's no DMZ; there's no buffer.
It's difficult because Manhattan is so fantastic, and it's 9 miles away, and all these cool rich people live there and have great lives, and you live in a semi-attached row house in Queens.
Africa is closer to me in every way than Iraq or Syria.
Folks in Alabama seem like folks in Georgia to me. I feel like you can just about combine the two.
Of course Toronto might as well be Buffalo, because we get each other's TV.
You can't be Canadian without being aware of at least one other country, the United States, 'cause it's so important to us. I think we sometimes like to think that, you know, Americans will pay attention to us from time to time, too.
I love playing small towns, but in Sweden, it's sometimes a little bit weird, because all small towns are just so close to bigger cities that people are not as grateful when you show up as they are in Odessa, Texas.
