The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It’s either ‚rawk‘ or it’s not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

If you look at U.S. history through religious history, there is very much a motif that shows the importance religion has played in the U.S. We’re a very religious country and it affects the way we look at various political issues.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

There are no second acts in American lives.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

When it comes to gossip, I have to readily admit men are as guilty as women.

Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.

I think Americans are very patriotic.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

The American people abhor a vacuum.

Both times I was in India, I could not get people to listen to each other. I had to literally tell people to listen to each other and tell them that they can’t get creative and find alternate solutions if they don’t listen to each other. There’s a lot of arguing and justifying.

I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

I think it’s an Irish thing. We don’t really care. We say it as we mean it, and you have to deal with it. The truth is the truth.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

A chaplain’s assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the American Army.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

People tend to think that because I’m a performer and I don’t go to a regular high school that I haven’t personally been affected by bullies. But it’s actually quite the contrary.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

I read so much stuff that black women say, especially about my relationship. ‚Oh, he left his black wife to go be with some exotic chick.‘ First of all, my girl is black: she’s Jamaican.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

I’m a bookworm. I know with my physical appearance that I don’t look like the typical reader. I’m in Barnes & Noble all the time, and you can look at people that look like they are supposed to be in there. I am in there, pants sagging, hat backwards.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

Feminists wish women to seem like men. They’re not men.

The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

It was really hard for them to intimidate me. They felt I was intimidating. One of the growers had a name for me: I think it was ‚dragon lady‘ or something like it.

Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

Europeans are much more serious than we are in America because they think that a good place to discuss intellectual matters is a beer party.

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.

I’m married to an Italian woman, and I used to love cooking Italian at home, because it’s one-pot cooking. But my wife does not approve of my Italian cooking.

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

I look like a woman, but I think like a man.