I do love my full English breakfast, but not every day. What I can't do without first thing in the morning, though, is my Danish pastry or a croissant - anything with a laminated dough, enriched with butter to make it beautifully golden and flaky.

My father came to the U.S. from Lebanon in 1920 when he was 8 without knowing a word of English. He traveled to Green Bay, Wis., married, bought a house, and he and my mom, Helen, raised 10 kids. Everything depended on his one-man business driving a truck.

My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.

My mom made me read a ton of books, so I got good at words and understood the English language. So when I started rapping, words were something I knew. I learned how to manipulate them so that I could say whatever I wanted to say.

My mom speaks English - she moved to England in the '70s, so she's fluent in English. We use to speak in Spanish when I was a kid all the time, me and my mom. But when I went to boarding school, I kind of lost it a little bit.

Spanglish is the encounter: perhaps the word is marriage or divorce of English and Spanish, but also of Anglo and Hispanic civilizations - not only in the United States but in the entire continent and, perhaps, also in Spain.

French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow.

Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.

We have a very long legal system with the European Union, and we're English speaking.

We should have a path to legal status for the 12 million people that are here illegally. It means, come out from the shadows, pay a fine, earn legal status by working, by paying taxes, learning English. Not committing crimes and earn legal status where you're not cutting in front of the line for people that are patiently waiting outside.

Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude, and punishments were barbarous; but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions.

The Indians seemed to be living in a place and in a way that was of immense importance to me. So I associate learning to read - English, oddly enough - with wanting to know about Indians. I'm still growing into it. I've never outgrown that.

I spend more time learning about Buddhism than English, which is why my English today is still bad.

I am learning English and can understand better than I can speak it. But having said that, I am learning as quickly as I can.

I reached Delhi a few days early for the shooting of Gandhi, to prepare myself for the role by learning to spin the charkha, speak English correctly and take elocution lessons.

I'm learning English at the moment. I can say 'Big Ben', 'Hello Rodney', 'Tower Bridge' and 'Loo'.

English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn't have connectives like 'and' that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

Some may argue that countries like Japan and China improved economically without English, but they, too, are learning English fast.

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter.

I have been learning English on the road since I started when I was 15, so it is a slow process but making some progress. Now I think I am much more comfortable with my English. However, it is difficult, still, when I speak about something that is not tennis.

When I was 12 years old, I got interested in learning English.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

It is good to be well connected with English language, literature and history, but the knowledge of our culture and roots is equally important.