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Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.

We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.

People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.

A different language is a different vision of life.

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.

The culture is just so coarse that you have to take it to that level and people will be like, 'Whoa!' And then you can make people think about stuff. It's kind of like shock therapy.

Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.

Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.

You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture.

Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.