Popular quotes about Spanish! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 8
I have a B.A. in Spanish, so briefly I thought that somebody might pay me to speak Spanish badly in another country, like Norway.
Karen RussellTooDamn-Funky: It's a start, ok. Been thinking bout the boyz. 'member last year my bro did that immersion thing in Venezuela? Kciker5525: Where he learned to speak Spanish??? TooDamn-Funky: Yeah! u go for 2 weeks talk nothing but Spanish u come back fluent. Kicker5535: ...???? TooDamn-Funky: Well this is like a guy immersion program! Kicker5525: So...what. I'm going 2 b fluent in GUY? TooDamn-Funky: Exactly! u will c what they talk about alone. U will c how they r with each other. U will c how they THINK!! AND WHEN IT'S DONE YOU'LL BE ABLE TO WRITE A GUY GUIDE BOOK!! Kicker5525: U r deranged.
Kate BrianMy uncle is from Argentina, so I grew up hearing Spanish. My Spanish isn't very good, but my pronunciation isn't terrible.
MobyAmerica has never had a very wide vocabulary for miscegenation. We say we like diversity, but we don't like the idea that our Hispanic neighbor is going to marry our daughter. America has nothing like the Spanish vocabulary for miscegenation. Mulatto, mestizo, Creole - these Spanish and French terms suggest, by their use, that miscegenation is a fact of life. America has only black and white. In eighteenth-century America, if you had any drop of African blood in you, you were black.
Richard RodriguezThe whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.
Edwidge DanticatThe character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velรกzquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.
Lucian FreudI look at myself, and I see a Spanish person who's trying to be understood by an English-speaking audience and is putting a lot of energy into that, instead of into expressing himself freely and feeling comfortable.
Javier BardemI'd like to continue my education. The physical stuff's great and I think it's great as an actor because you get to live a lot of little lives, but learning more about the world, learning another language, continuing with my Spanish that's important.
Scott EastwoodWhen the Irish nun said to me, "Speak your name loud and clear so that all the boys and girls can hear you," she was asking me to use language publicly, with strangers. That's the appropriate instruction for a teacher to give. If she were to say to me, "We are going to speak now in Spanish, just like you do at home. You can whisper anything you want to me, and I am going to call you by a nickname, just like your mother does," that would be inappropriate. Intimacy is not what classrooms are about.
Richard RodriguezRemember the story of the Spanish prisoner. For many years he was confined in a dungeon... One day it occurred to him to push the door of his cell. It was open; and it had never been locked.
Winston ChurchillMy father is Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino; my mother is half-Irish and half-Japanese; Greek last name; born in Hawaii, raised in Germany.
Mark DacascosThere are going to be stories of very young kids that were brought to this country at a very young age who don't even speak Spanish that are going to be sent back to Nicaragua or some other place. And it's gonna feel weird and I understand that. The goal here is to have an immigration policy that works. And if you provide a path for people to enter this country illegally and if they stay here long enough and pay enough in taxes, well let them stay legally...why would anyone come in through the legal process?
Marco RubioI got a burlap sack, put a brick in the middle, and filled it with rags, corncobs, some Spanish moss, and sand. I hung that sack off the branch of an oak tree. I'd wrap my hands with a necktie of my daddy's and punch at it. My mom gave me an hour a day. My brothers and sisters said, "Nah." I said, "You'll see."
Joe FrazierIn French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.
Jose BergaminWell, I've got something to tell you, In my last life I was a Spanish Count and one of the things I loved to do when I was a count in Spain was take all the commoners, line them up against a wall and throw rocks at them, being a professional hockey goalie is punishment for my bad habits in past lives.
Gilles GrattonI still come out to music that's in Spanish. There's no denying who I am, but I've just made it to where my performance is so anybody can understand it - whether you're 10 years old or 80 years old.
Gabriel IglesiasI think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.
Jorge Luis BorgesOne of the first things that my English teacher told when I began studying in New York was, "You're here because if you pick it up from the street, not everyone speaks good English." And it happens all the time, anywhere. If you pick up Spanish from the streets, you're not going to be able to speak it correctly.
Demian BichirWe love and lose in China, we weep on England's moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we're the same.
Maya AngelouIf you were to do the world championship of victimhood in modern times, then the finals would probably be between Jews and Palestinians. I think the Jews win: we, Isralians, go from the Spanish Inquisition to pogroms to the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion to World War II and the Holocaust - it's a horrible history. And if you look at the Palestinian world, victimized by every entity in the Middle East, they were massacred in every country. I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is this fear of genocide.
Etgar KeretThe past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, but not Spanish spice or French sauce or too much Indian corn. Nothing too filling or fancy ahead of the turkey and pumpkin pie, just the way Grandma used to cook it.
Tony HorwitzI have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
Oliver GoldsmithThe Spanish league is fantastic, but it has not the great passion the English Premiership has got.
Michael OwenYou know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.
Emily RiosI'm not a salsa singer who wants to sing in English, and I'm not this American kid who wants to sing Spanish.
Marc AnthonyThere's a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody.
Carlos SantanaMy grandmother is a little Cuban woman who cooks all day and speaks Spanish. Your grandmother watches pay-per-view porn." "She used to watch the Weather Channel, but she said there wasn't enough action." -Ranger and Stephanie
Janet EvanovichI know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish...well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point.
Louis de BernieresIn Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home โand regardless of whether or not I have been to bed โ breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chilies , a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert.
Hunter S. ThompsonThe Spanish government, having run completely out of money, secretly sold the Pyrenees to China, and is now separated from France only by traffic cones.
Dave BarryI realised that the political context had got worse since the 2010 World Cup. I tried to ignore it but I wanted, as a national coach - you may call this Utopia - to make Catalans and Basques feel good about supporting a Spanish side... to unite even the most sectarian and nationalist.
Vicente del BosqueJust the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.
Sarah VowellI learned Spanish at home and, since half my family doesn't speak English, it's my first language.
Odette AnnableThe first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.
Eric ClaptonWhere there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.
Ntozake ShangeYou don't have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them. The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda. (On the Spanish Civil War, 1937)
Robert CapaI would like to tell our American, British and Spanish friends that the Iraqi crisis is not a problem between the United States and France, but between those who want to move forward in the logic of war and the international community.
Dominique de VillepinI tried sex once with a woman and that woman was Gala. It was overrated. I tried sex once with a man and that man was the famous juggler Federico Garcia Lorca [the Spanish Surrealist poet]. It was very painful.
Salvador DaliVenti is twenty. Large is large. In fact, tall is large and grande is Spanish for large. Venti is the only one that doesn't mean large. It's also the only one that's Italian. Congratulations, you're stupid in three languages.
Paul RuddI wanna open a Jamaican/Irish/Spanish small plate breakfast restaurant and call it Tapas the Morning to Ja.
Harris WittelsClaude Debussy defined the guitar as an expressive harpsicord. I believe that is the best definition ever given of the Spanish guitar. This phrase is the starting point for my Concierto de Aranjuez Our guitar is the only survivor of the rich and anarchic instrumental wildlife of the Middle Ages.
Joaquin Rodrigo