We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand each other less and less.
If you came from Mars and tried to analyse British or American society through novels, you'd think our society was preponderantly full of middle-aged, slightly alcoholic, middle-class, intellectual men, most of whom are divorced from their families and have nothing to do with children.
My war buddies, some were Americans, but some were Afghans. These were the guys that I fought alongside. We bled alongside each other; we mourned together. When I came home, these weren't people I could keep up with on Facebook.
We had a certain kind of really big prestige among, I suppose not just intellectual folk, but a sort of nice middle class intelligent folk of a very urban nature.
For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.
I'm not an American, but I have this weird connection to America in different ways through my dad living here for five years, my godfather being an American who I'm very close to.
I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren't available to men before or after, just a very brief period.
My folks came to U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, went to Hollywood and became an alien.
I'm a first-generation American, so I had friends from several cultures while growing up, including Indian and Iranian friends.
We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.