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“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became a butterfly.”
― Barbara Haines Howett, Ladies of the Borobudur

“I'd hoped the language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don't talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don't hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say "potty" or "wawa." It got to the point where I'd see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up. I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention.

Rather than admit defeat, I decided to change my goals. I told myself that I'd never really cared about learning the language. My main priority was to get the house in shape. The verbs would come in due time, but until then I needed a comfortable place to hide. ”
― David Sedaris

“There is a difference between arrival and entrance. Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plan touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your luggage. You can arrive a place and never really enter it; you get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over, slowly, in bits and pieces. […] It is like awakening slowly, over a period of weeks. And then one morning, you open your eyes and you are finally here, really and truly here. You are just beginning to know where you are.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“Going to a country where you don't speak the language is like wading into the sea when you can't swim - it's intimidating at first, not impossible, and ultimately manageable.”
― Stewart Stafford

“When you travel overseas, the locals see you as a foreigner, and when you return, you see the locals as foreigners.”
― Robert Black

“Amazing that you can get a cappuccino at a gas station in L.A. at four in the morning and you can't buy a stamp at the post office in Sofia.”
― Annie Ward, The Making of June

“It is only other people’s ridiculous beliefs or customs that seem ridiculous to us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The bodhi tree has been converted into a marriage tree. The belief is that young women who die before marriage should have a husband in the next world. Their relatives bring a wedding dress and monks to this tree and perform a wedding ceremony. The spirit of the dead woman is married to a famous singer, poet or magician who died many years ago. Their families believe that he’ll be a good husband will look after each wife as if she were the only one.”
― Christopher G. Moore, The Marriage Tree: Vincent Calvino Crime Novel

“At their core all cultures are cultureless.”
― B.S. Murthy, Crossing the Mirage - Passing through Youth

“The idyllic mayhem of two cultures colliding just doesn’t seem as funny anymore.”
― Kris Kidd

“The farm work they hated was the only work they knew. Often, even the basic skills of plumbing or electricity or mechanical work were mysteries to them �� as were the job discipline and the subtleties that children raised in the industrial world learn without thinking about them; starting work on time, working set hours, taking orders from strangers instead of their father, playing office politics.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power

“I laughed at myself for getting so peeved. It did not matter that it had taken a week for the tailor to make the mattress. I had time and so did everyone else: time was the one resource everyone was rich in and generous with in Nepal. How maladjusted of me not to recognize this.”
― Jane Wilson-Howarth, A Glimpse of Eternal Snows: A Journey of Love and Loss in the Himalayas

“Instead of a dial tone, smooth jazz greeted my ear.
What the Horror?”
― C. Rae D'Arc, Don't Date the Haunted

“The word spinster, mixed with stifled laughter from the living room, picked her ear like a needle. Will I ever escape the culture of my faraway country? she wondered.”
― Zoë S. Roy, Spinster Kang

“A wide-brimmed spinster’s hat had been thrown up in the sky. It was gradually falling into the deep ocean.”
― Zoë S. Roy, Spinster Kang

“In some cultures, performing the marriage rite is quite expensive. Those who can't afford it, can't marry even when they really want to,”
― Ayi Etim, How To Have The Best Relationship And The Best Marriage,: Best Relationship Tips.

“I'm a time traveler too, you know, anyone my age is, we just had to do it the old-fashioned way, one day at a time. You can die in the same place you were born, but live long enough and you'll still learn all about culture shock.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Monsters in a Mirror: Strange Tales from the Chapel Perilous

“Being one of the few Asian people in Mount Shasta had its drawbacks. I never felt like I fit in."
He blinks. "Do you feel like you fit in Japan?"
"Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no." It's hard to shake the feeling of otherness, telling me I am a tourist in my own life. Growing up in America, Princess Izumi will never be truly Japanese, an imperial biographer recently wrote. I faced the same in Mount Shasta. Izumi will never be truly American.
Truth? Sometimes I question if I should even be a princess of Japan. If I am laying claim to something that isn't mine. Maybe I will never be Japanese enough. My throat is scratchy, and I curl my fingers into my palms. No. This is my right. I was raised in America, but my father is the Crown Prince, and Japanese values are still a deep pool within me. Entrenched in my blood. People can say what they want. That I am not enough. They can talk, but I stay silent, quietly digging deeper, pulling up my roots, satiating my thirst.”
― Emiko Jean, Tokyo Dreaming

“if we are unaware that our conditioning is also relative, we just defend our conditioning, we react against that of others, we try to destroy the other, in more or less subtle ways... perhaps humanity was not ready for globalization.”
― Pablo Sender

“I’m not from another country, I thought, my heart sinking through the floor. I’m from another planet.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“She was even at fault for having brought a wringer-mop from England, complaining loudly that such a simple thing was unprocurable in "this God-forsaken country".”
― Peter Graham, Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century

“I always miss my wife, even when she's right in front of me.”
― Sandi Tan, The Black Isle

“The perpetrator of such a misdemeanor must have a motive. Is UMMO the private joke of a group of Spanish engineers? Is it a psychological warfare exercise, as some French analysts suspect? Or is the truth more complex, rooted in a social reality where the ideas and symbols of UMMO have acquired a life of their own, their special mythology, and a set of beliefs that feed on themselves?

We can at least be certain of one thing: the UMMO documents do not come from advanced beings trying to demonstrate their existence to us. But try to explain it to their disciples! Very few UFO believers, and even fewer of their New Age counterparts, have any formal training in science. They are easily awed by any document that contains a few equations and a numerical system of base 12. Yet if they had some awareness of modern technology, they would realize how easy it should be for an advanced race to prove its genuine skill to a society like the human race.

After reading the masses of documents purportedly coming from the planet UMMO, I asked myself: if I had the opportunity to communicate with intelligent beings of an earlier time, such as the high priests of Egypt, how would I establish a meaningful dialogue? I certainly would not insult them by sending a letter beginning with ”We are aware of the transcendence of what we are about to tell you”—especially if I had an imperfect command of hieroglyphics! Instead, I would concentrate on a few points of valuable, verifiable information. Since the Egyptians already knew how to make electrical batteries and were aware of the magnetic properties of certain minerals, I would send them a simple set of instructions to make a coil and a compass. I could explain resistance and Ohm’s Law, a simple equation that was easily within the grasp of their mathematicians. Or I would tell them about making glass and lenses from sand. If they wanted proof, I would not bother to reveal to them set theory or the fact that E is equal to mc2. Instead, I would send them a table predicting future eclipses, or a diagram to build an alternator, or Leonardo da Vinci’s design for variable-speed cogwheels. That should get the attention of the top scientists in their culture and open up a dialogue. Unfortunately, the extraterrestrials of UMMO and other planets never seem to communicate at this level. Are they afraid of collapsing our society by appearing too advanced with respect to us? This hypothesis does not hold, since they have chosen a very obvious way of showing themselves in our skies.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Revelations

“It takes a certain kind of person to live in
China now', Chen mused.
'What kind of person?' Mary asked.
'Someone who can see true meanings; someone who does not only want the world better but also believes it can be made better, and gets angry because it is not done. ; someone who is not willing to hide himself in one of the few good places left in the world--someone who is tough!”
― Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk

“The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and
awareness �� an interest in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of
contrast and difference.”
― Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language

“She eyed Hayden. "What kind of a name is Croft, anyway?"
Hayden brightened up. "It's British actually. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower."
Sugar raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. "And I went on a Carnival cruise once, so I guess that makes us even." She put her head back and made a coughing sound that I realized, after a few seconds, was a laugh. A look of quiet alarm came over Hayden's face.”
― Mary Simeses, irrestible blueberry bakeshop & cafe