I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath. Lynn Abbey
I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor translations... English from Edwardian times. Sandra Cisneros
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh. Alain de Botton
I'm still an English professor at Rice University here in Houston. They've been very generous in letting me on a very long leash to just work on 'The Passage' and its sequels. Justin Cronin
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized. Oscar Wilde
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
In English, my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness. It means waiting. It is like the number nine, a muddy color. Sandra Cisneros
It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no real pattern. Peter Ackroyd
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. P.D. James
Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating. Dizzy Dean
My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way. Margaret Atwood
My mother studied English and drama at the University of Pennsylvania, where my father studied architecture. She was a great influence in all sorts of ways, a wicked wit. Donald Barthelme
No, I didn't forget Samoan - I understand it when you talk to me but, you know, to put phrases together I sound like I do in English. Junior Seau
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. Mahatma Gandhi
Sitting here now today, I can forgive a lot of the English people because it only takes a hand full of bad people to do something stupid like that and it can make the whole country look bad. Marvin Hagler
Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it. Sandra Cisneros
The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study. Peter Ackroyd
The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.Karl Heinrich Marx
The English have always been greedy for news of times past, with that mixture of fatalism and melancholy which is part of the national character. Peter Ackroyd