Unfamiliar Customs Quotes

I am in the habit, like most British people, of holding the door open for people. But in the U.S., people don't understand it. You get odd looks or doors slammed in your face.

So the first time you hear the concept of Halloween when you're a kid your brain can't even process the information. You're like: "What is this? What did you say?" "What did you say about giving out candy? Who's giving out candy?" "Everyone that we know is just giving out candy!"

I describe my years in Los Angeles as 12 years of culture shock.

Leonard Aster thanked Fighting Prawn and the Mollusk tribe for their hospitality. “You mean,” said Fighting Prawn, “for not killing you?” “Yes,” said Leonard. “It was very gracious of you.” “Do you,” said Leonard, “I mean, does you tribe, shake hands?” “No,” said Fighting Prawn. “We kiss on the lips.” “Oh,” said Leonard, looking very alarmed.

The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people.

How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as 'the bizarre'. Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else.

There's a lot of comedy in being the outsider. You can say, 'That's weird. Why do you do it that way? That's foreign to me. That's pretty weird.'

I'm homesick everywhere I go, but England has a negative effect on my spirit to a profound degree. That trip from Heathrow into London is worse than the flight over there. It's just so grey, and I'm not a pub person, and the traffic in London gives me a heart attack. It's not a comforting place, on any level, to me.

When I came to England, everybody was indoors all the time, and nobody said hello to each other. That was weird.

We shot a bit of 'Hunted' in Tangier, and you are in a very, very different world. It's very difficult to blend in over there.

In The States I would have no edge, no advantage at all.

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier.

Every country has an aspect to it that rubs up people the wrong way.

The thing is, I'm used to handshakes. Every time someone comes for a hug, I'm very confused. I'm told that I give out the worst hugs, too.

We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be.

A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province.

How I'd like to start a new life in a distant land. Not because of racism or politics. But to be in a place that I knew hardly anything about, in a place where I wouldn't even care to know the prime minister's name. A place where names and faces would have no meaning for me.

I am too inexperienced and ignorant to conduct myself with propriety in this town, where every thing is new to me, and many things are unaccountable and perplexing.

It was the dumbest thing I had ever seen, but it's a family thing, and I guess it's clean.

It was very liberating, living in a foreign country, a place where everything was new and strange - the food, the customs, the climate, everything.