Foreign Quotes

“She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“How I wished during those sleepless hours that I belonged to a different nation, or better still, to none at all.”
― Winfried Georg Sebald, Vertigo

“For the first time in years, he felt the deep sadness of exile, knowing that he was alone here, an outsider, and too alert to the ironies, the niceties, the manners, and indeed, the morals to be able to participate.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Master

“The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind.
However, misfortune can itself sow seeds of creativity.

---- Afterword to "Hothouse" Brian Aldiss”
― Brian Aldiss, Hothouse

“Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him.”
― Wolfgang Pauli

“Spiritual love is when you see new faces as the oldest.”
― michael bassey johnson

“While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.”
― Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina

“Sina jinsi. Nguzo ya maisha yangu ni historia ya maisha yangu. Historia ya maisha yangu ni urithi wa watu waliojifunza kusema hapana kwa ndiyo nyingi – waliojitolea vitu vingi katika maisha yao kunifikisha hapa nilipo leo – walionifundisha falsafa ya kushindwa si hiari. Siri ya mafanikio yangu ni kujitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wangu wote; au 'pushing the envelope' kwa lugha ya kigeni.”
― Enock Maregesi

“There is a beauty in being surrounded by the foreign – seeing things from a new perspective, with new eyes”
― Marcel Proust

“Her name...was Mrs. marina Orlova, and she had grown up in Siberia. Later, she would tell him that she loathed the American custom of constantly smiling: "They are like chimpanzees," she said, in her bitter exclamatory voice. She grimaced, baring her teeth grotesquely. "Eee!" she said. "I smile at you! Eee! It is repulsive.”
― Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me

“I have studied many languages-French, Spanish and a little Italian, but no one told me that Statistics was a foreign language.”
― Charmaine J. Forde

“And at last, the dearest, most improbable sound of all— the sound of a green trolley car going around a comer— a trolley burdened with brown and alien and beautiful people,
and the sound of other people running and calling out with triumph as they leaped up
and swung aboard and vanished around a corner on the shrieking rails and were borne
away in the sun-blazed distance to leave only the sound of tortillas frying on the market stoves, or was it merely the ever rising and falling hum and burn of static quivering along two thousand miles of copper wire . . .”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“I tried to imagine what it would have been like to study at such a place, to walk across marble floors each morning and, day after day, come to associate learning with beauty. But my imagination failed me. I could only imagine the school as I was experiencing it now, as a kind of museum, a relic from someone else’s life”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“You can't be lost on a foreign land.”
― Noha Alaa El-Din, Norina Luciano

“While Venice cowered under the watchful eyes of soldiers, the kitchen staff kept busy preparing foreign dishes for the inquisitive doge's steady stream of scholarly guests. We served professors from some of the oldest universities (pork and buttered dumplings for one from Heidelberg, and pasta with a creamy meat sauce for another from Bologna), a renowned herbalist from France (rich cassoulet), a noted librarian from Sicily (cutlets stuffed with anchovies and olives), a dusky sorcerer from Egypt (marinated kebabs), a Florentine confidant of the late Savonarola (grilled fish with spinach), an alchemist from England (an overdone roast joint), and monk-copyists from all the major monasteries (boiled chicken and rice).”
― Elle Newmark, The Book of Unholy Mischief

“There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some point understanding may come. It will always be wordless. The moment you grasp what is foreign, you will lose the urge to explain it. To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it. When I start talking about Qaanaaq, to myself or to others, I again start to lose what has never been truly mine.”
― Peter Hoeg

“It's about cultures; they widen the dimensions of the present, they vanquish the walls of the narrow perception. They make you look forward to experiencing a new life that is full of unusual things.”
― Noha Alaa El-Din, It's Hard to Please Vandanya: The Suitcase

“¿Dónde podrás quedarte? ¿dónde sosiego hallarás? en todo puerto extranjero en ningún sitio un hogar.”
― Stefan Zweig, Correspondance 1932-1942

“Russians are among the nicest people that I have met in life.”
― Steven Magee

“There was more to upgrade. I went to a shop in downtown Oakland that sold salt of every kind and color, black and pink and blue. Each variety sat shimmering in a glass canister, priced by the ounce, with a handwritten card recounting its biography: here, salt from the beaches of Gujarat; there, salt from the pans of Brittany; behold, salt from the suburbs of Portland.

I backed slowly out the door. I would stick with Diamond Crystal.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“Even with imagination, there is still nation.”
― Alain Bremond-Torrent, running is flying intermittently

“Having no say in their journey, they came here.”
― Kathryn Stripling Byer, Black Shawl: Poems

“Happy is the heart of the king when gifts come to him.
And when every foreign land [comes],
that is our success, that is our fortune.
What shall we do about it ? All is ruin!”
― Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms

“The truth is raining down on the toxic Trump administration.”
― Steven Magee

“I am an international kind of guy.”
― Steven Magee

“I had been to Jamaica and the Bahamas, and to Europe a few times, but this was my first time being this far from home. I felt Nairobi's foreigness - or really, my own foreigness in relation to it - immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It's a sensation I've come to love as I've traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has different weight from what you're used to; it carries smells you can't quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“We can ruin our enjoyment of a song by finding a translation of the lyrics into a language we understand.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“This whole world is a foreign land.”
― Jordan Hoechlin

“To be foreign is to be free. To have a great expanse stretch out before you—the desert, the steppe. To have the shape of the moon behind you like a cradle, the deafening symphony of the cicadas, the air's fragrance of melon peel, the rustle of the scarab beetle when, come evening, the sky turns red, and it ventures out onto the sand to hunt. To have your own history, not for everyone, just your own history written in the tracks you leave behind.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob