The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.
I miss sometimes the buzz of America. A sense that anything can change at the drop of a hat. In a way, it's an exhausting thing to live with.
We have got to stop being a society that turns our heads and looks the other way.
Americans are really obsessed with their teeth being white and straight, aren't they? I saw this little girl the other day with one of those whole head braces. Elastic all the way around! How traumatizing for a child to have to wear one of those! You look like a monster.
When I was in school, you never saw anyone who looked like us that was on TV. And that was really weird for me because there's so many people of South Asian descent in America - in the world.
Americans are shy about the body.
When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.
There's a physicality and confidence to Americans; they're very present. That's something I enjoy being around because it rubs off on you.
At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.
I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces like unbaked rolls.