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Even though I have spent literally years of my life trying to learn another language, any other language - and even though I have in the past claimed in several key professional contexts that I speak other languages - I am in fact still trapped inside the bubble of English.

I have never designed a language for its own sake.

I realized very early in life what my abilities and limitations were, and foreign languages was definitely one of my limitations. With strenuous effort, I just barely passed my French class at Harvard so I could graduate.

It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it.

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

You're never going to learn everything.

I was brought up bilingual, but there came a point where my mom went back to work and I got a white babysitter, so sadly I lost it. Now I can understand Spanish and put words together, but I don't speak it fluently. I'm ashamed of that.

I wish I could fly. Or speak fluent Chinese. Both I think are equally impossible.

If you're going to learn a new language, you can't try to be perfect. You'll stop yourself from talking. You just have to let go.