Stephen May > Quotes

“Good booze, good blues and nothing to do tomorrow. This is actually all anyone needs to be happy.”
― Stephen May, Wake Up Happy Every Day

“Catherine long ago decided that grapefruit is the only proper breakfast juice. It is wake-up juice. Orange juice is acceptable as an alternative but really it’s for the slack, for people who don’t really want to wake up. As for those who like apple or cranberry juice in the morning, you just know they are weak. Masturbators and adulterers.”
― Stephen May, Wake Up Happy Every Day

“There is no need for conflict between men and women,' she says. 'The war is always between rich and poor. Between those with power and those without. Between those who fight for progress and those who hold it back. Sex has nothing to do with it.”
― Stephen May, Sell Us the Rope

“Americans and their orthodontistry, honestly, you’d think the right to a brilliant smile was enshrined in the constitution.”
― Stephen May, Wake Up Happy Every Day

“but she's an adroit whinger, an adept and polyglot complainer.”
― Stephen May, Sell Us the Rope

“Work is a shit way to spend your time and everyone knows it.”
― Stephen May, Wake Up Happy Every Day

“At nineteen all proper adult ages are more or less the same. Thirty-seven, forty-five, sixty-two, a hundred and three. It hardly matters. They are all strange, faraway places you can't believe you'll ever visit.”
― Stephen May

“to be a high-school English teacher in modern Britain is to be a bad comedian in a hostile club. You have to deliver your terrible material six times a day to a crowd that would rather be somewhere else. And the heckling is vicious and it never ever stops.”
― Stephen May, Wake Up Happy Every Day

“I've noticed that the people here get strangely upset by hearing other languages. I wonder why that is?" says Elli.
"It makes them feel stupid," says Rosa. "How can you believe you're the master race when everybody else speaks more languages than you do, when they even speak your own language better than you do?”
― Stephen May, Sell Us the Rope

“Example 3. (T: Male Mandarin teacher in his late twenties. B1 and B2 boys about 13 years old; G1: a 12-year-old girl.) T: (Speaking slowly as he writes on the whiteboard) 摆-乌-龙 (bai wulong). Mess up. 乌龙 (wulong), black dragon. 乌龙茶 知道吗? Wulong Tea, do you know? Black Dragon tea. 乌龙 (wulong)? means /mI ∫eIp/. (Silence) T: 乌龙 (wulong) /mI ∫eIp/. 摆乌龙 (bai wulong). Mess up. B1: What? T: Made a mistake. Accident. /mI ∫eIp/. G1: /mIshǽp/, you mean? B1: Oh I see. T: What? B2: /mIshǽp/. It’s /mIshǽp/. B1: Not /mI ∫eIp/. T: /mIshǽp/. B1: Yes.”
― Stephen May, The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and Bilingual Education

“It's as if to rich people, only other rich people are truly real.”
― Stephen May, Sell Us the Rope

“Take it from me, local government offices are mostly about flexi-time and cake. Cake comes in for birthdays, for house moves, for news of engagements, births, weddings, christenings, driving tests, kids making the cross-country team or passing grade one piano. There is no news too small that it can’t be celebrated with chocolate brownies for the whole office.”
― Stephen May, Wake Up Happy Every Day

“Sometimes doing nothing is also doing something.”
― Stephen May, Sell Us the Rope

“Why do women always have to express gratitude for things that should be basic? Things like being listened to. Things like not being murdered.”
― Stephen May, Sell Us the Rope

“Example 6. (T: Male teacher in his early thirties. B1 and B2 are boys about 13 years old.) B1: Are the Chinese still fighting? T: No, why? B1: So why are you always talking about 统一? unite B2: It’s about Taiwan and China. They are two countries, and they want to be united. T: No. 不是两个国家。台湾是中国的一部分。 Not two countries. Taiwan is part of China. B2: No, they are not. T: They are. B2: They are not. In the Olympics, there were separate teams. I saw it. T: It’s like Scotland or Northern Ireland. 都是英国, 但是世界杯 football 还有rugby也 是分开的了。 All part of the UK. But for the World Cup football and rugby, they can be separately represented. B1: Scotland is a different country. T: No it is not. B2: It is. XXX (a girl in the class) is from Scotland. She was born in … where were you born again? B1: Dundee. T: 但它是统一的了。不是两个国家. The UNITED Kingdom 知不知道?! But it is united. Not two separate countries. The United Kingdom, don’t you understand?!”
― Stephen May, The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and Bilingual Education

“Sindy is British and much more demure and well brought up than Barbie, who seems like a brash, oversexualised gold-digger if you ask me. The sort of girl who would marry a minor Rolling Stone. Even in her air-hostess uniform she looks like a hard-eyed little pole dancer.”
― Stephen May, Wake Up Happy Every Day

“Example 3. (T: Male Mandarin teacher in his late twenties. B1 and B2 boys about 13 years old; G1: a 12-year-old girl.) T: (Speaking slowly as he writes on the whiteboard) 摆-乌-龙 (bai wulong). Mess up. 乌龙 (wulong), black dragon. 乌龙茶 知道吗? Wulong Tea, do you know? Black Dragon tea. 乌龙 (wulong)? means /mI ∫eIp/.”
― Stephen May, The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and Bilingual Education