2 Speaking Spanish Quotes & Sayings

I felt completely at home in Mexico - speaking Spanish to my cousins, running around Acapulco and stuffing my face with mole and homemade tortillas. Mexico opened my heart. — Aimee Garcia

One of the first things to understand was how people knew what language to speak to whom. Where I've lived in the American Southwest, choosing to speak English or Spanish based on how someone looks is risky. If you try English and they don't speak it, you can switch to Spanish if you know it. But if you start with Spanish, you might offend: 'You don't think I speak English?' This can be the case if you're Anglo, even if you speak Spanish very well and just heard the other person speaking Spanish. When I described such an scenario to Indians, they couldn't relate - to them, choosing the wrong language wasn't embarrassing or politically charged. Or so they said. — Michael Erard

Here is perhaps the most delicious turn that comes out of thinking about politics from the standpoint of place: anyone of any race, language, religion, or origin is welcome, as long as they live well on the land. The great Central Valley region does not prefer English over Spanish or Japanese or Hmong. If it had any preferences at all, it might best like the languages it has heard for thousands of years, such as Maidu or Miwok, simply because it is used to them. Mythically speaking, it will welcome whomever chooses to observe the etiquette, express the gratitude, grasp the tools, and learn the songs that it takes to live there. — Gary Snyder

The silence in the giant redwood forest near my house draws me...At eight in the morning, the great trees stand rooted in a silence so absolute that one's inmost self comes to rest. An aged silence. Some mornings I sleep through two alarms and awaken only after the first buses have arrived. I go anyway. There are hundreds of people in the woods before me. People speaking French, German, Spanish; people marveling to each other and calling to their children in Japanese, Swedish, Russian, and some languages I do not know. And children shrieking in the universal language of childhood. But the silence is always there, unchanged. It is as impervious to these passing sounds as the trees themselves. — Rachel Naomi Remen

I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I grew up moving from country to country due to political, governmental, and social issues and just family atmosphere that wasn't right to bring up your kid in a country where there's a dictatorship or a communist type sense, so I incorporate that int music. — Cristian Machado

I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions. — Harry J. Anslinger

Leo gestured to the empty core. "The syncopator goes here. It's a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The dozen glass tubes on the outside? Those are filled with powerful, dangerous stuff. That glowing red one is Lemnos fire from my dad's forges. This murky stuff here? That's water from the River Styx. The stuff in the tubes is going to power the ship, right? Like radioactive rods in a nuclear reactor. But the mix ratio has to be controlled, and the timer is already operational."
Leo tapped the digital clock, which now read 65:15. "That means without the syncopator, this stuff is all going to vent into the chamber at the same time, in sixty-five minutes. At that point, we'll get a very nasty reaction."
Jason and Piper stared at him. Leo wondered if he'd been speaking English. Sometimes when he was agitated he slipped into Spanish, like his mom used to do in her workshop. But he was pretty sure he'd used English. — Rick Riordan

My first audition happened to be for 'Kindergarten Cop,' and I took that role. I was only starting to learn English at that point. Spanish is my first language, so they made me a speaking character in the movie. I didn't really know I was shooting a movie. I was just having a lot of fun with 30 kids my own age. — Odette Annable

I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, and she's pretty good at faking Portuguese. I wish that I spoke more languages than I do. — Sebastian Arcelus

When I spoke to her in Spanish I was not translating, I was not thinking my thoughts in English first, but I was nevertheless outside the language I was speaking, building simple sentences with the blocks I'd memorized, not communicating through a fluid medium. — Ben Lerner

I wanted to be accepted. It must have been in sixth grade. It was just before the Fourth of July. They were trying out students for this patriotic play. I wanted to do Abe Lincoln, so I learned the Gettysburg Address inside and out. I'd be out in the fields pickin' the crops and I'd be memorizin'. I was the only one who didn't have to read the part, 'cause I learned it. The part was given to a girl who was a grower's daughter. She had to read it out of a book, but they said she had better diction. I was very disappointed. I quit about eighth grade. Any time anybody'd talk to me about politics, about civil rights, I would ignore it. It's a very degrading thing because you can't express yourself. They wanted us to speak English in the school classes. We'd put out a real effort. I would get into a lot of fights because I spoke Spanish and they couldn't understand it. I was punished. I was kept after school for not speaking English. — Studs Terkel

I look at myself, and I see a Spanish person who's trying to be understood by an English-speaking audience and is putting a lot of energy into that, instead of into expressing himself freely and feeling comfortable. — Javier Bardem

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you. — Maya Angelou

Kerry was here in Los Angeles. He was courting the Spanish vote by speaking Spanish. And he showed people he could be boring in two languages. — Jay Leno

Televisa is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world, and the steps we have taken, which extend the tenure of our exclusive access to Televisa's premium Spanish-language telenovelas, sports, sitcoms, reality series, news programs and feature films, put Univision in a stronger competitive position. — Randy Falco

When you get into the third or fourth generation of Latino immigrants to the United States, you see the kids speaking more English than Spanish, and it's important that we don't lose our identity, our language. — Thalia

I have an iron lung, and the dog keeps me from getting too close to magnets.
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I have SARS. He's tallying the people I infect.
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I'm nearsighted. He helps me read the road signs.
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I'm a recovering alcoholic. The dog gets between me and a beer.
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I have an irregular heartbeat and he's CPR certified.
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Color-blind. He tells me when the traffic lights change.
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He translates for my Spanish-speaking clients.
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He's a chick magnet.
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I'm a lawyer. He chases ambulances for me. — Jodi Picoult

When you're speaking Spanish, you're thinking in a different way. — Giancarlo Esposito

Do not speak unless you can improve on silence, said a Buddhist sage. — Tim Ward

You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, masterful in a language that was really difficult for me for many years. — Junot Diaz

The llama was wearing a bridle with a rope attached where you might expect to find reins. A greeting card was hanging from his neck:
'Hola Como se llama? Yo me llamo C. Llama.'
During his preschool years, Clay's favorite cartoon had featured a Spanish-speaking boy naturalist who was always saving animals with his girl cousin, and Clay still knew enough of the language to translate:
'Hello. How do you call yourself? I call myself Como C. Llama.'
The llama's name is What is your name? — Pseudonymous Bosch

In some countries, of course, Spanish is the language spoken in public. But for many American children whose families speak Spanish at home, it becomes a private language. They use it to keep the English-speaking world at bay. — Richard Rodriguez

When I'm speaking of love, when I'm speaking of reversing hate, I'm speaking not only of reconciliation - even I don't use that word - I use another word in Spanish, that's called 'reencuentro' - it's not reconciliation. — Michelle Bachelet

OUCH

"The arrabal (a term used for poor neighbourhoods in Argentina and Uruguay) and carpa (informal mobile theatre set up inside tents, once common in Latin America), with their caliente (hot) rhythms such as the rumba or the cha-cha-cha, were conquering audiences all over the world, a trend allegorised in song lyrics about their popularity among the French and other non-Latin Americans - "The Frenchman has fun like this/as does the German/and the Irishman has a ball/as does even the Muslim" ("Cachita") - even as they filtered in the presence of a blackness - "and if you want to dance/look for your Cachita/and tell her "Come on negrita"/let's dance" - denied in the official discourse of those Spanish=speaking countries wielding the greatest economic power in the region: namely, Argentina and Mexico, the latter of which would eventually incorporate Afro-Latin American culture into its cinema - although being careful to mark it as Cuban and not Mexican. — Robert McKee Irwin

I take great pride in the fact that I have lived in a Spanish-speaking country. — Christopher Dodd

I learned this one growing up in Texas and, subsequently, living in Los Angeles: always use the 'usted' form when speaking to a Spanish official. Mexican border patrol cops don't like it when you call them 'amigo,' give them a hardy pat on the back, slip a $20 in their pocket. No bueno, it doesn't fly. By the way, those of you not laughing at that obviously took French in high school, and that was a gay choice. — Iliza Shlesinger

My Spanish is coming along, I understand everything. I've been working on becoming more confident when speaking. — Danny Garcia

Castilian Spanish speaking Spain is big, but is bigger in addition with Catalonian speaking Spain, Galician speaking Spain and Basque speaking Spain. Democratic Spain, Constitutional Spain, can not be separated from diversity and the respect to the citizenship — Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

I didn't grow up speaking Spanish, and the interesting thing was, we would watch these novelas and you didn't have to speak Spanish to understand what was going on. — Eva Longoria

I would love to adopt a child from a Spanish speaking country, because I want to have Spanish in the home. — Valerie Cruz