Paz

“For an immigrant, an accent may be a form of vengeance, a way of insulting the language that constrains him. In the language he does not esteem, he will mumble only the words necessary to his work and daily life, always the same words, not one more. And even these he shall forget at the end of his life, to return to the vocabulary of childhood. Just as the names of those around us are forgotten when the memory begins to lose water, as a swimming pool slowly drains away, as yesterday is forgotten while our deepest memories remain. But for one who had adopted a foreign tongue as if hand-picking his own mother, for one who had sought out and loved every last one of its words, the persistence of an accent was an unfair punishment.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste

“Every opportunity for pleasure that was offered to me automatically carried with it an almost equally strong desire to do without it. I might give way to either impulse, but the presence of the two contrary wishes was what gave zest to both.”
― Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant

“In fact what estranged me most from rock, and from that entire impulse toward Americanization, was that it reached me without carrying any trace of rebellion.”
― Caetano Veloso, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil

“I strove to speak such fastidious Hungarian that perhaps for this very reason it sometimes rang false. Perhaps a word here or there, pronounced with excessive zeal, stood out like a glass eye that was more realistic than the good eye.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste