FastSaying

In graduate school, I decide to write my doctoral thesis on how Italian architecture influenced English playwrights of the seventeenth century. I wonder why certain playwrights decided to set their tragedies, written in English, in Italian palaces.


Jhumpa Lahiri

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I ended up doing four or five plays in college and being an English major with my thesis in language...
CARRIE COON I speak Italian, French, Creole and English.
META GOLDING Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
H. L. MENCKEN Italian was my first foreign language. I speak it better than English.
IMAN I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University o...
ELIZABETH EDWARDS Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fic...
W. G. SEBALD Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
H. L. MENCKEN Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN In Italian, a belladonna is a beautiful lady; in English, it's a deadly poison.
AMBROSE BIERCE I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
PETER USTINOV I am not 100% English, I am actually part Italian and even part Hungarian. Therefore I feel very muc...
BRUCE BENNETT Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, my wife speaks five languages: Russian, English, French, Italian and...
CHEECH MARIN My brother and I have matching tattoos on our arms. It says, 'Humility is strength,' in Port...
NIKKI REED I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to sc...
SUSAN MINOT I came to graduate school at Harvard University in 1954. My thesis supervisor, Julian Schwinger, had...
SHELDON LEE GLASHOW I studied literature and Italian at Yale. I wrote my thesis about Italo Svevo, one of my heroes.
NATHANIEL RICH Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the e...
AMBROSE BIERCE BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the es...
AMBROSE BIERCE I've dubbed for my roles in Hindi, English, and Italian. Therefore, I'm used to the process....
KABIR BEDI I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, an...
SEBASTIAN ARCELUS In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in.
T.S. ELIOT I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the '60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a gr...
CLINT EASTWOOD In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabular...
ETHAN CANIN The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all cla...
TIMOTHY WEST Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted ...
SHAKIRA In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering remedial English in ...
JOSEPH SOBRAN A good typeface is like a well-crafted English or Italian suit: it always looks perfect.
BRUNO MAAG Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wan...
SHAKIRA For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In m...
F. SIONIL JOSE So I went to English school, secondary English school, so forget going to Mecca for my religious edu...
ABDULLAH AHMAD BADAWI I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And th...
ALEKSANDAR HEMON I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech.
TOM STOPPARD I've never lived in an English-speaking country, ever, but I lived in Austria. So, my second lan...
EDGAR RAMIREZ I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for a...
DAVID DUCHOVNY When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I r...
BEN SCHNETZER You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights...
TONY KUSHNER In 1980 I sent a play, 'Jitney,' to the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, won a Jerome...
AUGUST WILSON I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich ...
ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR. I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich ...
NOVALIS I was an English major at Yale, but I did do undergraduate theater there. And I went to the graduate...
PAUL GIAMATTI English was great because I could just write my opinion, and that was good enough. I was terrible in...
IAN HARDING When I took part in European leaders summits, it was sometimes unpleasant for me to hear Romanian, P...
FRANCOIS HOLLANDE I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahea...
RICHARD YATES The first time I was in London, I went to an English greasy spoon to get some breakfast and realised...
MONICA BELLUCCI My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or...
J. M. G. LE CLEZIO I excelled in English while I was at school.
JAMIE BELL I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English ...
SALLY KIRKLAND I will not show off [written in Old English style font]
NANCY CARTWRIGHT Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my...
JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS Playwrights are the most gregarious writers - to get our work done, we need actors, directors, set d...
KATORI HALL I am certainly Italian in my love of food! I eat everything, but I love Italian food most of all. Ev...
MONICA BELLUCCI In 1996, I took advantage of some favourable circumstances to propose to the state of the Ticino Can...
MARIO BOTTA These events will contribute to acknowledge the presence of the Italian club on campus. The club's g...
GIOVANNA SUMMERFIELD I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.
DANIEL ALARCON The utmost I can bear for myself in my best days is that I was one of the hundred best playwrights i...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of...
JHUMPA LAHIRI My mom speaks English - she moved to England in the '70s, so she's fluent in English. We use...
ED WEEKS I have a handicap in that English is not my first language. So even though I'm a writer, I don&#...
PATRICIA RIGGEN I can't even spell spaghetti never mind talk Italian. How could I tell an Italian to get the ball? H...
BRIAN CLOUGH I arrived in Milan when I was 18. But my time in Italian football helped me to mature.
ALEXANDRE PATO After this, I took private lessons in Italian from an elementary school teacher. He gave me themes t...
GRAZIA DELEDDA I'll be in the team for Wednesday's Italian Cup final. We've yet to decide whether it's on the bench...
FRANCESCO TOTTI I was born here in the States. I moved to Portugal when I was five. And then my parents put me in an...
DANIELA RUAH I was born and raised in New York, but my family on both sides is of Italian descent.
AIDA TURTURRO I think there are perhaps four playwrights of the 20th century that we could not have done without: ...
EDWARD ALBEE Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica, mom sang in English and Ital...
TONY VISCONTI She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century a...
BOB DYLAN The English playwrights of the '50s and '60s didn't really keep writing or getting produ...
GARRY HYNES In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm...
AL PACINO My desk is like a 'U,' so I have my computer and lots of dictionaries because I write in Spa...
ISABEL ALLENDE I've told you I don't live and die by the polls. Thus, I will refrain from pointing out that we're n...
, IN THE NEW REPUBLIC My husband is American but Italian. Then I have the Mexicano side. I see both in my kids. My daughte...
THALIA The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know it in any reputable sense of ...
ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH I read all of the nonfiction that I could find on Chechnya, and all the while, I was searching for a...
ANTHONY MARRA My partner, Joe, spends a lot of his time in Italy and has grown up in an Italian family, but it's m...
MARIO BATALI When I try to write in English, I feel like a bird without wings still trying to fly.
DEBASISH MRIDHA After karting in Venezuela, I came to Europe in 1998 to compete in international kart races, which w...
PASTOR MALDONADO Quiero que [mi hijo] conozca el secreto de la felicidad, algo tan sencillo que da la impresión de q...
JAMES RHODES In Auburn, the Italian community is small but very enthusiastic, and many students enroll every term...
GIOVANNA SUMMERFIELD I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my lov...
SOPHIA BUSH I'm a big pasta fan. I'm a big Italian food fan. Anything Italian - I love cheese, mozzarell...
MALIN AKERMAN It's a very interesting process to write in English because all my literary resources come from Span...
SHAKIRA We have seen that English words have meaning in a sentence because of their position in the sentence...
CHARLTON LAIRD Most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sic...
AL PACINO Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-cen...
JOHN UPDIKE I had my heart set on becoming an English teacher, but stumbled into acting after meeting a theatric...
CHARISMA CARPENTER I learned English at school, or at least that's how it started. Also, in Holland - as opposed to...
MICHIEL HUISMAN I beg you, put an end to the occupation. I beg the Italian government and the Italian people to put ...
GIULIANA SGRENA In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespea...
AARON LAZAR By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door...
PETER USTINOV I understand English; I read and write English perfectly, but the accent won't go away.
SOFIA VERGARA I've got a little bit of Italian in my heart.
JULIA MANCUSO I write entirely in English; Tagalog chauvinists chide me for this. I feel no guilt in doing so. But...
F. SIONIL JOSE I could never muster the courage to speak to girls in my college in Pune. Most of them were Parsis a...
SHARAD PAWAR My parents talked to me in Spanish and I answered in English,
JOHN LEGUIZAMO He's one of the most important American playwrights ever,
ROCCO LANDESMAN Nothing in my younger life could have told me I would have needed to know how to speak English.
OMAR SY I had, at a point in time, decided not to write on the corporate world. But if people expect me to s...
RAVI SUBRAMANIAN It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice vers...
FREDRIK BAJER

More Jhumpa Lahiri

The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.
JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship
JHUMPA LAHIRI That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.
JHUMPA LAHIRI I feel partly American, but I have an ambiguous relation with both America and India, the only two c...
JHUMPA LAHIRI A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling th...
JHUMPA LAHIRI The essential dilemma of my life is between my deep desire to belong and my suspicion of belonging.
JHUMPA LAHIRI I think, like any artist or any writer, I just want to have that pure freedom of expression and of t...
JHUMPA LAHIRI All American fiction could be classified as immigrant fiction.
JHUMPA LAHIRI When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I...
JHUMPA LAHIRI My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father ca...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of wha...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I have two young children, and I will say that motherhood is its own peak, just like in the process ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Immersing myself in Shakespeare's plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant,...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I think it's the small things, the smaller episodes and details that I linger on and try to draw...
JHUMPA LAHIRI You can't have a hit every time. The main thing is to keep on working and not be afraid to take ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor's office in Brookline, Massachusetts, wh...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a daugh...
JHUMPA LAHIRI This story is based on a gentleman who indeed did... used to come to my parents' house in 1971 f...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I find it really liberating to be in a place where I am a foreigner in every way. I've lived wit...
JHUMPA LAHIRI On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfami...
JHUMPA LAHIRI The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.
JHUMPA LAHIRI Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I've gained a lot from James Joyce, Tolstoy, Chekhov and R. K. Narayan. While writing, I try to ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitan...
JHUMPA LAHIRI From the beginnings of literature, poets and writers have based their narratives on crossing borders...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a p...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it or even read it. I have an acce...
JHUMPA LAHIRI It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My n...
JHUMPA LAHIRI The knowledge of death seemed present in both sisters—it was something about the way they carried ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.
JHUMPA LAHIRI Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will t...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if...
JHUMPA LAHIRI On the technical side, I hope that my writing is evolving and maturing, ripening, deepening.
JHUMPA LAHIRI I'm always intrigued by authors who say, 'This book took 17 drafts.' They're very cl...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I have two passports because I have to have at least one, and I really don't know how I define m...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I think there are a lot of misconceptions on both sides, the developing vs. the developed world, esp...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I had been learning Italian for years. I always loved Latin, but Italian is a living language; I'...
JHUMPA LAHIRI The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one anoth...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocea...
JHUMPA LAHIRI It was important to me to become day-to-day fluent and functional in another language, and about 10 ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.
JHUMPA LAHIRI In college, I used to underline sentences that struck me, that made me look up from the page. They w...
JHUMPA LAHIRI In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabl...
JHUMPA LAHIRI They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was so...
JHUMPA LAHIRI He saw that his mother was dwelling in an alternate time, a more bearable reality.
JHUMPA LAHIRI Each day she removes a small portion of the unwanted things in people’s lives, though all of it, s...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Descartes, in his Third Meditation, said that God re-created the body at each successive moment. So ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI When Deepa poured Bela some water from the urn that stood on a little stool, in the corner of the ro...
JHUMPA LAHIRI She had preferred being on the plane, detached from the earth, the illusion of sitting still.
JHUMPA LAHIRI Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday, she sometimes said. Pronoun...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die.
JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tr...
JHUMPA LAHIRI But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI The imperfection became a mark of distinction about their home. Something visitors noticed, the firs...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Writing down call numbers with short pencils, searching up and down aisles that would turn dark when...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I don't know, he said, handing her the ticket. He'd been standing there all the while on the sidewal...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Too much information, and yet, in her case, not enough. In a world of diminishing mystery, the unkno...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging throu...
JHUMPA LAHIRI There was the anxiety that one day would not follow the next, combined with the certainty that it wo...
JHUMPA LAHIRI It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral; in Bengali, the wo...
JHUMPA LAHIRI ...learning was an act of rediscovery, knowledge a form of remembering.
JHUMPA LAHIRI The future haunted but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator.
JHUMPA LAHIRI Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold.
JHUMPA LAHIRI She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart an...
JHUMPA LAHIRI War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war,
JHUMPA LAHIRI With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before
JHUMPA LAHIRI With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.
JHUMPA LAHIRI And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd be...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tr...
JHUMPA LAHIRI For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of...
JHUMPA LAHIRI In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.
JHUMPA LAHIRI I've always been searching to arrive at a certain voice that will probably elude me forever.
JHUMPA LAHIRI I think about the structure, sure. I think about what's going to happen, and how it's going ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of...
JHUMPA LAHIRI On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight in...
JHUMPA LAHIRI While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new worl...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each pe...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I recently discovered the work of Giorgio Manganelli, who wrote a collection called 'Centuria,&#...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I'm from Kingston, R.I., sort of on the University of Rhode Island campus - on the margins of th...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so f...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount t...
JHUMPA LAHIRI If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fict...
JHUMPA LAHIRI If you look at my characters as a group, they all have a different relationship with the way that pl...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Even printed, on pages that are bound, sentences remain unsettled organisms. Years later, I can alwa...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time whil...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the b...
JHUMPA LAHIRI When you’re in love, you want to live forever. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to la...
JHUMPA LAHIRI You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much abo...
JHUMPA LAHIRI On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a ...
JHUMPA LAHIRI It imparts a certain momentum to nuclear negotiations with the US. France has played a significant r...
DILIP LAHIRI There is a great deal of French interest in India now that must still be converted into action on th...
DILIP LAHIRI