Foreign Quotes

“It was a very ordinary day, the day I realised that my becoming is my life and my home and that I don't have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who I've become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when I fall asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. An hour watching the stars, a coffee in the morning with someone beautiful, intelligent conversations at 5am while sharing the last cigarette. Taking trains to nowhere, walking hand in hand through foreign cities with someone you love. Oceans and poetry.

It was all very ordinary until my identity appeared, until my body and mind became one being. The day I saw the flowers and learned how to turn my daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long I let my life slip through my fingers, like water.
I'm holding on to it now,
and I'm not letting go.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

“Will: 'Singing the praises of our fair city? We treat you well here, don't we, James? I doubt I'd have that kind of luck in Shanghai. What do you call us there again?'
Jem: 'Yang guizi ... foreign devils.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Lingering, bottled-up anger never reveals the 'true colors' of an individual. It, on the contrary, becomes all mixed up, rotten, confused, forms a highly combustible, chemical compound then explodes as something foreign, something very different than one's natural self.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“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.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

“If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Reality. It is sometimes brought through foreign eyes; because if you do not know any better, you cannot see the worse (and vice versa).”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“The first and last weakness of his life, before him again. For a moment he felt himself blinded by his own memories; his own remembrances of the wits and wiles of Marian Halcombe that would steal into his thoughts; the sound of her laughter at his outrageous tales, the shadowed glance of distrust, the way her eyebrows would raise ever so slightly despite her resolution to seem disinterested in his foreign insights. She was the first woman he ventured to have complete equality in matching his tremendous cleverness.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug”
― Monica Ali, Brick Lane

“Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I saw cities, and roads of marvelous construction. I saw cruelty and greed, but I've seen them here too. I saw a people live a life that was strange in many ways, but also much the same as anywhere else."
"Then why are they so cruel?" There was an earnestness to the girl's face, an honest desire to know.
"Cruelty is in all of us," he said. "But they made it a virtue.”
― Anthony Ryan, Queen of Fire

“A block of blood should not have the word "cake" after it...they might as well say "shite gateau”
― Karl Pilkington, An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

“Facing a language you don't know is like returning to your infancy when your mother tongue used to be a foreign language to you”
― Munia Khan

“Of course no one accused the old woman of being a witch. But she was foreign. Her words percolated up the tunnel of her throat , espresso-thick and strong. Bad weather had eroded her face. Some believed that the sun had crisped her skin into coriaceous pleats. Others blamed the chaw of a wintry climate. No one knew where she came from, though lots of people privately thought that perhaps she ought to go back.”
― Carys Bray, Sweet Home

“Here march the eaters of earth,
the swallowers of rain.”
― J. Aleksandr Wootton, Forgetting: impressions from the millennial borderland

“Let someone else be the most powerful country, make ours the most peaceful country.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“La prima [canzone] tradotta in italiano con il titolo "Lo Straniero" rappresenta in fondo la condizione di tutti quelli che hanno la passione per le lingue. Siamo sempre stranieri, all'estero come nel nostro paese, figli di un altrove che non ci stanchiamo mai di cercare ma che esiste solo nelle nostre fantasie.”
― Diego Marani, Come ho imparato le lingue

“The joy of knowing a foreign language is inexpressible. I find it really difficult to express such joy in my mother tongue.”
― Munia Khan

“If you think it's bad now, my friend, wait till we reach a town!' He shook his head and brushed at his tattered, dirty shirtsleeve. 'Do try to remember we're visitors-and not welcome ones-if you should feel moved to reason with anyone.”
― David Weber, Oath of Swords

“If we don’t establish the truth in our nations, truth becomes foreign in the country.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“لقد كنت الناجي الوحيد من شعب منقرض وهو يطأ أرضاً جديدة، كنت كقادم من زمن آخر، مسافر كوني، أو حتى كائن من كوكب آخر هبط على الأرض، وفضلاً عن ذلك كنت مجرداً من كلّ القوى. شعرتُ بالتيه لكأنّي أحد الإسرائيليين في سيناء، ولكنها كانت غابة خضراء هذه المرة.”
― جلجامش نبيل, Gilgamesh Nabeel, صراع الأقنعة

“All foreign food is doomed to be consumed in India not so much by Indians as by a voracious Indian sensibility, which demands infinite versions of Indian food, and is unmoved by difference.”
― Amit Chaudhuri, Calcutta: Two Years in the City

“We who are residing in a foreign country, away from the immediate scene of action, perhaps can feel more deeply than those at home the evil effects of the present distracted condition of our country.”
― David McCullough, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

“To walk through unknown streets in cities where you are merely learning the language is to force yourself into a new state of hypervigilance. You are a traveler, and hopefully not just a tourist, and must appear calm, but maintain your bearings. Not to get too lost, too off course and without alternatives, without an escape plan in the event of a dangerous situation.”
― M.B. Dallocchio, The Desert Warrior

“Caroline has laid out a beautiful spread, which is a combination of some of my favorite things that she has cooked, and traditional Sikh wedding dishes provided by Jag's friends. There is a whole roasted beef tenderloin, sliced up with beautiful brioche rolls for those who want to make sandwiches, crispy brussels sprouts, potato gratin, and tomato pudding from Gemma's journal. The savory pudding was one of the dishes from Martha's wedding, which gave me the idea for this insanity to begin with, so it seemed appropriate. I actually think Gemma would strongly approve of this whole thing. And she certainly would have appreciated the exoticism of the wonderful Indian vegetarian dishes, lentils, fried pakoras, and a spicy chickpea stew.
From what I can tell, Gemma was thrilled anytime she could get introduced in a completely new cuisine, whether it was the Polish stonemason introducing her to pierogi and borsht, or the Chinese laundress bringing her tender dumplings, or the German butcher sharing his recipe for sauerbraten. She loved to experiment in the kitchen, and the Rabins encouraged her, gifting her cookbooks and letting her surprise them with new delicacies. Her favorite was 'With a Saucepan Over the Sea: Quaint and Delicious Recipes from the Kitchens of Foreign Countries,' a book of recipes from around the world that Gemma seemed to refer to frequently, enjoying most when she could alter one of the recipes to better fit the palate of the Rabins. Mrs. Rabin taught her all of the traditional Jewish dishes they needed for holiday celebrations, and was, by Gemma's account, a superlative cook in her own right.
Off to the side of the buffet is a lovely dessert table, swagged with white linen and topped with a small wedding cake, surrounded by dishes of fried dough balls soaked in rosewater syrup and decorated with pistachios and rose petals, and other Indian sweets.”
― Stacey Ballis, Recipe for Disaster