The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents and immigrants like them were known as '£10 poms.' Back then the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.

My parents are very funny when they have to deal with anything racy or off-color. They usually pretend they don't speak English.

Drawing on my fine command of the English language I said nothing.

The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you so when you start trying to count them on one hand you don't need any fingers.

Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house.

An Englishman teaching an American about food is like the blind leading the one-eyed.

My fitness trainer's English my physio's English some of my friends are English. I don't have a problem with English people at all.

There is the fear common to all English-only speakers that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise you know why not just come out and say it?

At last in 1611 was made under the auspices of King James the famous King James version and this is the great literary monument of the English language.

I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous.

If we do not get No Child Left Behind right for Limited English Proficient students the law will be a failure for most schools in the 15th Congressional District and for many across the nation.

For this reason to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.

Making the City Of Joy gave me the best political education of my life. It became a wrestling match between an Englishman who had gradually ceased to be a Marxist and a culture that was becoming more Marxist by the day.

I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck like getting across the street.

When you're a young English person who wants to be an actress and you have dreams you dream of being Vanessa Redgrave or Judi Dench.

Dreams do come true even for someone who couldn't speak English and never had a music lesson or much of an education.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

I have an all-Japanese design team and none of them speak English. So it's often funny and surprising how my ideas end up lost in translation.

No real English gentleman in his secret soul was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

We are weak writing is difficult but for my own sake I do not regret this journey which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships help one another and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.