For years they’ve grumbled that England is a cesspool…

“Ma chère, I serve a man who multiplied the loaves and fishes”—he smiled, nodding at the pool, where the swirls of the carps’ feeding…

— Diana Gabaldon

“Sister Walburga ate some of the sausage she was taking upriver for the anchorites, but you'd think from her distress that she was a…

— Ariana Franklin

“Oooo...He's being a saucy motherfu*ker tonight. He does wrong and I'm the one who gets treated like the whore of Babylon. Fine, he wants…

— S.K. Logsdon

“Does it not whet your appetite for the critical opera omnia of such an author, where he will freely have at the lenth and…

— Robert Farrar Capon

“New Englanders could be so brusque.”

— Cherise Sinclair

The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked…

— Paul Theroux

No, I didn't forget Samoan - I understand it when you talk to me but, you know, to put phrases together I sound like…

— Junior Seau

I was brought up by the English side of my family, who are very repressed and working class. Absolutely lovely, but very English.

— Bat for Lashes

While we like to think queueing is unique to British culture, the truth is that we are mere amateurs. The old Soviet Union turned…

— Julia Hartley-Brewer

I'm not very good at standard English.

— James Nesbitt

Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears.

— Anonymous

Nineteenth-century English literature I know; 19th-century sewage systems, not so much.

— Glen Duncan

“evening, they began to think that although he could never hope to be an Englishman, still it would be hard to visit that affliction…

— Charles Dickens

Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say…

— Julia Glass

English teachers tend to put more thought in the books than the author did

— Anonymous