For English Quotes

#1. I spent the period reading the first novel assigned for English. And wow. If I hadn't realized I was in France yet, I do now. Because Like Water for Chocolate has sex in it. LOTS of sex.

Stephanie Perkins

#2. I had to read Wuthering Heights for English and I never enjoyed a book in all my life as much as that one.

Marlon Brando

#3. Milton was the gold standard of religious poets for English and American scholars. But Milton wrote of Hell and Heaven from above and below, respectively, not from the inside: safer advantages.

Matthew Pearl

#4. It's fantastic for Arsenal, and for English football as well. You've got an English club with a lot of young English talent committing themselves to a club.

Dennis Bergkamp

#5. To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj.

Mahatma Gandhi

#6. I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't about books, or the idiosyncrasies and complexities of putting language together.

A.S. Byatt

#7. For English assignments I was constantly coming up with these strange adventure stories ... But I actually wanted to be an artist, or maybe work in the comic book industry.

Paul Kane

#8. What he says may be true for English, but why should I want to go into this God's house if only English are there? If God wanted us in this house than he would have sent our ancestors such a book.

Geraldine Brooks

#9. If we had a starting XI that no one could argue about it wouldn't say a lot for English football. We'd probably be on a downward spiral. It's good that people have different ideas about who should play.

Rio Ferdinand

#10. I think most of the world would like to be Scottish. All the Americans who come here never look for English blood or Welsh, only for Scottish and Irish. It's understandable. The Scots effectively created the face of the modern world: the railways, the bridges, the tunnels.

Joanna Lumley

#11. I played a little basketball, but basketball interfered with theater season. That's when we did our term plays and did nutshell versions of Shakespeare for English classes. And, believe me, I got a fair amount of looks from the guys on the team. 'You're in theater but you can play football?'

Dennis Haysbert

#12. The West Indians and Pakistanis play one-day cricket so well because they play for English counties.

Kapil Dev

#13. I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#14. I have a great admiration for English actors and actresses and have used them at every opportunity over the years, but now I won't have to import them to New York

Woody Allen

#15. We're in America; why do I have to "Press 1" for English?

Allan Hall

#16. Can I press one for English?

Jerry Lawler

#17. Gulliver's Travels sardonically proposed that Irish babies be fattened for English tables;

Robert A. Heinlein

#18. The irony of this endeavor is palpable, for English itself is a hopeless hodgepodge of other tongues, with more exceptions than rules, more chaos than order, and enough new words created each day to keep the Oxford English Dictionary folks very, very busy.

George Takei

#19. This house has enough nooks and crannies for English muffins.

Kathy Bryson

#20. I'm all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.

Karl Lagerfeld

#21. We're gonna be late for English, and I gotta take these pantyhose off on the way. I'm gettin' a serious wedgie.

Kami Garcia

#22. I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting ... I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I'm gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try to write.

David Duchovny

#23. As a rule the Holloywood pattern for English actors is simple. They are delighted to go, they are told there is a lot of work for them if they stick it out, they tell everyone how fabulous it is, they spend all their money - and then they come home. It seems to take from two to six years.

Julian Fellowes

#24. Particularly for English people, Shakespeare is always at the forefront of both drama and the English language. He's always been there. I can't remember starting school and not learning about him.

Jamie Campbell Bower

#25. I wasn't saying you were heartbroken." I sound like English is a new language for me, the way I stutter out the words. "I just meant it was hard for me to ... to watch."
He neither confirms nor denies that he might or might not have been even a teeny bit heartbroken.

Susan Ee

#26. If I said in one of my songs that my English teacher wanted to have sex with me in junior high, all I'm saying, is that I'm not gay, you know? People confuse the lyrics for me speaking my mind. I don't agree with that lifestyle, but if that lifestyle is for you, then it's your business.

Eminem

#27. On the basis of this information, it would be possible to argue that if everybody spoke English (or Chinese or Esperanto for that matter) everybody would be at war even more often.

Andrew Dalby

#28. People think I'm selling feminism in my books, but what I'm really doing is writing advertising copy for expensive private colleges that most women can't afford anyway. Oh, and try to find a job with a major in English literature. No luck? Joke's on you, sucker!

Mary Gordon

#29. For me, even just being English was a whole sort of experience in as much as I'm Australian.

Radha Mitchell

#30. My father was an Episcopal minister, and for 14 years my family lived in China, in a city called Wuchang. We four children spoke Chinese before we spoke English. We left when the communists came, in the early 1930s. I was about 5 years old.

Audrey Meadows

#31. You English are like mad bulls ... you see red everywhere! What on earth has come over you, to heap on us such suspicion as is unworthy of a great nation. I regard this as a personal insult ... You make it uncommonly difficult for a man to remain friendly to England.

Wilhelm II

#32. I had wanted to write English crime novels based on the American hard-boiled style, and for the first two novels about Brixton, the critics didn't actually know I was Irish.

Ken Bruen

#33. The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases; and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for tea.

Florence Nightingale

#34. I am happy to see you, Masood."
"Happy? Happy? What a pale, pathetic English word. You must not be 'happy' to see me. No, you must be enraptured, transported! You must be overjoyed. I have no use for 'happy'.

Damon Galgut

#35. I came to Los Angeles for the first time in 1994. I spoke no English. I only knew how to say two sentences: 'How are you?' and 'I want to work with Johnny Depp.'

Penelope Cruz

#36. There is a story I always tell my students ... when I came for the 1st time to the US. I didn't speak English (Only Spanish) & I saw on every door the word "exit" which in Spanish means Success = Exito. And then I said :"No wonder Americans are winners ,every door they open leads to success

Pablo

#37. I was in the fashion shows in Milan; I was seventeen, I was doing like 100 shows. People were asking, 'How does it feel to be the model of the moment?' It was hard for me to answer as myself. I barely spoke English.

Gisele Bundchen

#38. A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.

Gustav Stresemann

#39. I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.

Peter Porter

#40. For us Indians, I don't think English can ever exude that magic of emotions which our mother tongue can.

Kailash Kher

#41. In the States, the Abdication story, for example, is portrayed as The World Well Lost For Love while the English, of a certain type anyway, see it only as childish, irresponsible and absurd.

Julian Fellowes

#42. I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good English words.

Mark Twain

#43. Remember: If you go for a walk with a friend in England, don't say a single word for hours; if you go for a walk with your dog, talk to it all the time.

George Mikes

#44. I graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an English literature degree and travelled for a year before going to work.

Natalie Massenet

#45. English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.

Paul Scott

#46. But why have you dear English Jew whose forefathers fought to enter the country of Johnny Mill, the Stuart with a little heart, saunter in Haridwar, no pubs or fish and chips' counters here, only Ganga-Jal, -the holy ale- Quaff it for the spirit and carry it to the banks of Thames in a holy grail.

Aporva Kala

#47. We French-Canadians belong to one country, Canada: Canada is for us the whole world: but the English-Canadians have two countries, one here and one across the sea.

Wilfrid Laurier

#48. Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.

Julia Glass

#49. That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.

Roy Blount Jr.

#50. God gets it. When you reach out to him, he's not looking for fancy words that would impress your English teacher. He sees your heart. A groan, a look, a sigh - he speaks every language. He understands.

Max Lucado

#51. At school, myself and some pals, all football-daft, divided up the old English First Division and wrote off to half a dozen clubs each asking for a trial.

Drew Busby

#52. I've made a dozen films in the English language. But then, for love, for my family and friends, I returned to Europe ... I annoyingly - looking back - turned down films like 007, 'For Your Eyes Only,' written specially for me.

Ornella Muti

#53. Saint George he was for England, And before he killed the dragon he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#54. It is not always easy for a young player to come through at the club level, because all the clubs are able to buy for 20 million or 30 million and it is hard for young English talent to come through and to get recognition and be able to be part of the squad or start playing.

Edwin Van Der Sar

#55. I refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for the sake of false pride or questionable social advantage.

Mahatma Gandhi

#56. I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

Christopher Hitchens

#57. To be fair, English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.

Bill Bryson

#58. I've done quite a few adverts. I've also done some presenting and acting work in Spain. I did a lot of Spanish education videos for people wanting to learn English.

Christopher Parker

#59. You don't want to lose the foreign feel of a book entirely, but for me the prime requisite is to get it sounding good in English. If it sounds clumsy, readers will pounce on it of course.

Anthea Bell

#60. I'd been trying for a while to get parts that weren't just the English bad guy, so it was quite refreshing to be playing someone who was a compassionate, decent guy.

Sean Bean

#61. 'Othello' was my first Shakespearean discovery. I was obsessed with drama at school, and I studied the play for my English GCSE. Desdemona is the part that everyone wants, but Iago's wife Emilia is the one I've always been drawn to.

Michelle Dockery

#62. I write entirely in English; Tagalog chauvinists chide me for this. I feel no guilt in doing so. But I am sad that I cannot write in my native Ilokano. History demanded this; if it isn't English I am using now, I would most probably be writing in Spanish like Rizal, or even German or Japanese.

F. Sionil Jose

#63. The gh at the end of many modern words, however, like dough, cough, and trough, is actually an artifact not of Dutch orthographic tendencies, but of Norman distaste for the Middle English letter yogh, which looked like this: 3. Yogh fell out of use around the end of the fifteenth century.

David Wolman

#64. It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.

Aravind Adiga

#65. No studio in Hollywood wanted 'Cold Mountain.' None. No one wanted 'Ripley,' no one wanted 'The English Patient.' That tells you there isn't really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.

Anthony Minghella

#66. Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.

Shakira

#67. Yes, it would nice for this fifty year period, this cradle of all vampire short stories in the English language, to include a vampire tale by Edgar Allan Poe. But the sad answer is that Poe never penned a vampire story.

Andrew Barger

#68. Pot itself has nothing to do with pots and pans, but comes from the Mexican-Spanish word potiguaya, which means marijuana leaves. And marijuana is a Mexification of 'Mary Jane' for reasons that everybody is much too stoned to remember.

Mark Forsyth

#69. I was sent to a school with bosses for teachers- no Twain, only cane; check your dick you harry, no Dickens either, No Tom Sawyers no David Copperfields only Webster, master it for grammar, the Wren with a dash of Martini-Drink deep.

Aporva Kala

#70. Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing
turn your toes out when you walk
And remember who you are!

Lewis Carroll

#71. In the mind of all the English soldiers there is absolutely no hate for the Germans, but a kind of brotherly though slightly comtemptuous kindness - as to men who are going through a bad time as well as ourselves.

Ivor Gurney

#72. We always seem to be a bit surprised that our children are reflecting stuff that we are showing them. I don't know about you, but every movie that I saw when I was a kid, I emulated. I was Haley Mills for an entire summer and had an English accent.

Cheryl Ladd

#73. Dishwasher safe, debit only, Deborah produced from the arsenal of useful English words for immigrants, with barely a pause for thought.

Sorin Suciu

#74. I went to study English for two reasons. Principally because when I was in university, studying drama wasn't considered an option. You couldn't get a degree course for it. And so many plays and things that I was interested in landed themselves in a broader spectrum of literature.

James Callis

#75. Jesus is teaching and wants you to learn. This means you will be stretched. Jesus does not want you stuck in a bonehead English class, which I was for several years.

Jonah Books

#76. It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.

Helen Reddy

#77. In Spanish, I record a lot of single-voice tracks, and in English, I 'stack' a lot of voices, so it's very different, and I think I got so used to recording in Spanish for six years that it was really refreshing and challenging to get in and record 'Double Vision' in English.

Prince Royce

#78. Yes, for my undergrad I majored in Criminal Justice and minored in Political Science and English.

Matthew McGrory

#79. I taught high school English for 24 years. I always teach my students to appreciate the beauty of language and to write poetically.

Mark Takano

#80. Now I am writing this diary in English, which for me is not the language of intimacy or love, but an attempt at distance and sanity, a means of recalling normality.

Jasmina Tesanovic

#81. A schoolchild should be taught grammar
for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.

E.B. White

#82. There isn't what my father called the cruising hostility of the English press - where they're looking around for something to attack. You don't feel that there's a great reservoir of resentment in the press as you do in England.

Martin Amis

#83. There's a word for this in English," he mused, still soft. "I can't recall it. I've made you a ... a fallen women. Yes?"
"Yes," I agreed, still smiling. "Thank you ever so much."
"It's been entirely my pleasure," he said in Romanian, and I turned my face into his sleeve and began to laugh.

Shana Abe

#84. For the people of my country," Renato said, "water is everything: love, life, religion ... even God."
"It is like that for me too," I said. "In English we call that a metaphor."
"Of course," said Renato, "and water is the most abundant metaphor on earth.

Pam Houston

#85. My grandmother was an English teacher for a while. And she stressed to me the importance of reading, being able to articulate well.

Kevin Gates

#86. China's cinema has been rising for some time; it has more exposure, so my chances of becoming internationally known are better. But the first thing I have to do is learn English. If I can grasp the language, then perhaps I can think about the U.S.

Ziyi Zhang

#87. A well known director wouldn't take the chance on casting me for an American role after he discovered that I was English. Some time later, he expressed his regret that he hadn't taken the chance with me.

Marsha Thomason

#88. After college, I did a bunch of different jobs - taught English in Mexico, worked in public radio, worked for a web design company - but there was something about documentaries that really attracted me.

Marshall Curry

#89. Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

Terry Pratchett

#90. When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can you imagine, in the middle of the IRA bombing campaigns? I saw an ad inviting Irish applicants for an induction course, so I signed up.

Colm Toibin

#91. Sometimes for me not throwing a tantrum is what running a marathon or swimming the English Channel must be like for others of a less-challenging emotional nature ...

Roseanne Barr

#92. If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

Winston Churchill

#93. I left school at 16 but I wish I'd gone to university - I think I would have studied English literature. I had a knack for that. But I don't think you have the kind of wisdom at 16 to make that decision.

Brendan Coyle

#94. Americans are suckers for an English accent.

John Irving

#95. So, I am a b*stard, and the English are b*stards. But the really bad news is that you are too. My vision of Europe would be Europe of b*stards for whom the question of legitimacy was a site of endless struggle and contestation ...

Simon Critchley

#96. MasterChef Junior for me was about working closely with these kids and getting them to reeducate their parents to understand that food is as important educationally as Math and English and it's important that we don't take it for granted.

Gordon Ramsay

#97. I want for India complete independence in the full English sense of that English term.

Mahatma Gandhi

#98. There's no nation under the sun can beat the English for ill-politeness: for my part, I hate the very sight of them; and so I shall only just visit a person of quality or two of my particular acquaintance, and then I shall go back again to France.

Fanny Burney

#99. The only people who should play for England are English people

Jack Wilshere

#100. At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me.
I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then

Alison Bechdel