There is a level of snobbery and fickleness in L.A.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.

Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology – looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does.

I play a nobody in Japan.

In Los Angeles, everyone is a star.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

I feel that there are a few things in the world without cultural barriers.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

I’ve come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

In hip-hop, there’s not a lot of love. There’s not a lot of love being spread. It’s always like ‚I’m stuntin‘ on you raps, or I’m better than you raps.‘ It’s not a lot of ‚Yo man, I idolize you raps.‘

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

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

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

Dancing was always part of my culture growing up in Barbados. When I shot my 1st video I worked really hard with my choreographer to perfect the routines.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

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

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

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.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

The problem with Yanks is they are wimps.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

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.

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

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

London is a roost for every bird.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

Why don’t Jews drink? It interferes with their suffering.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

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

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

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.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.

When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of free choice, I was surprised. After only a week, I began to have a sense of the appeal of the country and its people – along with despair about its future.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.

I’m thrilled to have Corona join me on my ‚X100PRE‘ Tour to give my fans a taste of Corona Estereo Beach and showcase their support of Latin music. It’s not solely about the music – it’s about the culture, creativity, and contributing to the movement that connects us all together.