There is no Thanksgiving back in the old country where I come from. You know why? Because being thankful is a sin.
I think the scores for Olympic gymnastics are affected by what countries the judge and the gymnast are from. That’s wrong. That type of political pandering isn’t meant for gymnastic Olympic events. It’s meant for the Supreme Court.
In some countries Women’s Day is a national holiday and men give women flowers. In America Women’s Day falls on another holiday, Mardi Gras, where men give women beads in the respectful and post-feminist desire to see their naked boobies.
The nation of Iran is threatening to sue the makers of the movie Argo. They say the movie was an unrealistic portrayal of their country. You can’t do that! That would be like Scotland suing over the movie Shrek.
For a while, some schools across the country were banning spelling bees. For obvious reasons, of course – steroids.
I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we’d never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
The real influence on my work was reality, that of my country and Latin America in general.
One of the cool, chaste countries – Canada or Sweden.
Laws aren’t ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them.
Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you’re still in it.
The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
Congo is one of the least-developed countries in the world, and has millions of acres of virtually untouched forest.
Socrates, indeed, when he was asked of what country he called himself, said, “Of the world”; for he considered himself an inhabitant and a citizen of the whole world.
No one could ever meet death for his country without the hope of immortality.
Patria est communis omnium parens. Our country is the common parent of all.
We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.
Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in traveling, in the country.