I speak five languages: English, Swedish, French, Italian, and German.
(T)he most important reason American leftists love France is that French elites say bad things about America. French intellectuals call us racist, stupid, imperialistic, simplistic, etc. ' and that alone is proof of their intellectualism. So long as you call America “racist,” you could add that an enema is as good as a toothbrush and some professor of “communications theory” would applaud.
At the Oscars, if you didn't vote for '12 Years a Slave,' you were a racist. You have to be very careful about what you say. I do have particular views and opinions that most of this town doesn't share, but it's not like I'm a fascist or a racist. There's nothing like that in my history.
I had the advantage, that I know Swedish. So I had the Swedish book and I had a lot of English translations, and German translations, and I did everything to make the best English translation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie I could. And then, there I went. "Oh! I think she's thinking this, but I think she should say it!" And so on. It's wonderful to do that.
I can get by quite well in Italian or German, though if the discussion got to a high level, I'd run out of vocabulary. I'm stronger in French and Swedish.
Only the French people say French food is the finest cuisine in the world. If you ask anyone else, they will tell you the best food in the world is Italian.
We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in the trenches, taken by nationalities. We agreed on a descending-order like this: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scots; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portugese; Belgians; French. We put the Belgians and French there for spite; they could not have been dirtier than the Algerians and the Portugese.
Sometimes if I really want to get someone's attention, I'll start a sentence with something like, "I'm not racist, but..." I say, "I'm not racist, but you look great today." They say, "That wasn't racist at all." I said, "I know. I said I'm not racist. You never listen. Typical Mexican."
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
If I have anything to say against Obama it's not because I'm a racist, it's because I don't like what he's doing as President and anybody should be able to feel that way, but what I find now is that if you say anything against him you're called a racist.
Like all food, whether you're talking about Persian food, or Chinese food, or Swedish food, it's always a reflection of wars, trading, a bunch of good and a bunch of bad. But what's left is always the food story.
Personally, I am a nationalist, but my race is my nation, and I see all true Europeans as my racial brethren and part of my nation, be them Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish, French, German, or English, Russian, Polish, or Belorussian, or whatever.
If you were to ask me to speak Swedish or Dutch or German, I have no idea if I could pull that off!
Eddie Izzard is doing his show in French... Will he be able to fake ad-lib as well in other languages? He's been speaking French for a while now, but he's talking about doing his act in German. Haven't the German people suffered enough?
I'm not comparing myself with Donald Trump or anybody else - but the people are fed up with the politicians ignoring the problem. The people are fed up by if they say something about the influx of the mass immigration from mostly Islamic countries, what they really feel is the threat for the safety of their daughters who go to school or their parents who walk in the park or themselves going shopping on a Thursday evening in Holland - they are being called racist if they make a remark about, 'hey this is not our country anymore.'
The image foreigners have of French cuisine is fattening and very fancy food. But it's not true - French food isn't just rich. The word "healthy" doesn't exist in French. We have many, many words, but not that one. To me, healthy means paying close attention to feeding people.