Quotes about Culture

The 100% American is 99% an idiot.

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist.

Fourth of July picnic. And by the way, that picnic, like everything else in this land, is a model of efficiency: you drive at top speed, set up in a previously reserved space, spread out the baskets, bolt your food, kick the ball, and rush home to avoid the traffic. In Chile, a similar project would take three days.

More than by upper-class señoritas, with their long legs and blond manes, I've been impressed by the women of the people: mature, strong, hard-working, earthy.

Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: "snack" and "quickie," to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up.

it is the most Catholic country in the world—more Catholic than Ireland, and certainly much more so than the Vatican.

I have not succeeded in completely shaking free of religion, and when I'm faced with any difficulty, the first thing that occurs to me is to pray, just in case, which is what all Chileans do, even atheists . . . forgive me, agnostics.

The national sport is to talk about the person who just left the room. In this, too, we are different from our idols, the English, whose principles forbid them from making personal remarks.

You get three Venezuelans together and one will play the drums or the guitar and the other two will dance; there is no ill that can resist that treatment. Our parties, in contrast, seem like funerals: the men gather in a corner to talk business and the women die of boredom. Only the young dance, seduced by North American music, but as soon as they marry they turn solemn like their parents.

Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.