I was awkward-looking with huge brown eyes, dark brown, pencil-straight hair styled into an old-school Romanian bowl haircut from the 1980s. And I was very, very small. I was always the tiniest kid on my street and in my classes at school... The gym was the one place I didn't have to worry about feeling awkward for being so petite.

Dominique Moceanu

I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest.

A. Whitney Brown

The only thing that differentiates you and me from a couple of fourteen year old pyromaniacs is balistic glass!

Adam Savage

In the 1930s, there were so many different conflicts going on between the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Romanians and so on.

Alan Furst

From Lady Carlisle's trip to Moscow in 1663 to Veronica Atkinson's tour of duty during the 1989 Romanian revolution, it is clear that very little has changed. Four hundred years of innovation, liberation, and improvement clearly bypassed the Foreign Office while making its rounds through Westminster.

Amanda Foreman

I saw so many opportunities in the U.S. because I knew that I could make a living doing things I could never do in Romania.

Anastasia Soare

In Romania, during the communist regime, we were very culturally suppressed. At 18 years old, I wasn't allowed to wear bell-bottom jeans and eyeliner. I couldn't understand why!

Anastasia Soare

I grew up in Romania studying art and architecture.

Anastasia Soare

In Romania it was normal that when you got a facial someone would tweeze your brows.

Anastasia Soare

I realized that nobody paid attention to eyebrows. In Romania, it was the norm. I thought, 'This is Hollywood. We work with the most incredible, beautiful models and actors and this is important.'

Anastasia Soare

In my early 20s, living in a communist regime in Romania, success to me simply meant leaving and coming to America.

Anastasia Soare

When I went to art school in Romania, we learned the Golden Ratio Technique Theory, which taught us that when you draw a portrait and want to show an emotion, you change the eyebrows. They are the most important feature on the face.

Anastasia Soare

I was fresh off the boat from Romania, and one of my clients was the agent to all of the '90s supermodels: Gail Elliott, Naomi Campbell, Stephanie Seymour, Cindy Crawford. I had no idea who these girls were! They were so gorgeous, absolutely the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life.

Anastasia Soare

Going to beauty school and art school in Romania helped me to think of why we use makeup, and it's exactly how you do portrait. You use pencil to make a 3D effect. Makeup is the same... You are able to create an illusion of perfection and balancing proportion.

Anastasia Soare

Iran also has an extensive missile development programme. Iranian officials declare that the range of their modified Shahab-3 missiles is 2,000km, putting allied countries such as Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria within reach.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Romanians have a particular love for poetry and have a beautiful, vivid language. The poets they love are not versifiers like Vadim Tudor, but genuinely complex mystical souls like Mircea Cartarescu.

Andrei Codrescu

New Orleans reminds me of Romania because New Orleans is very corrupt politically.

Andrei Codrescu

Romanians are culturally European, very close to the French. Socially, they are now building a society that is emotionally closer to the Balkans, Turkey and Greece.

Andrei Codrescu

My mother and I were part of a deal in the mid-'60s between Romania and Israel. Israel bought freedom for Romanian Jews for $2,000 a head. Ceausescu made a bundle in hard currency. He also 'sold' ethnic Germans to West Germany. Instead of going to Israel, my mother and I came to the United States.

Andrei Codrescu

After so many years, I feel more American than anything else, but I'm also Romanian and whatever other oddities of temperament I picked up elsewhere, in Transylvania or France, for instance. These days, everybody is both an exile and a resident - they don't call it the global village for nothing.

Andrei Codrescu

Back in Romania, always I was struggling to compete with Vladislav Rastorotsky, the great Russian coach of Lyudmila Turishcheva. He was a powerful coach, internationally. I took him like the major challenge of my life, and pretty soon I'm beating him and we are pushing each other so hard, so fierce. But out of the arena, we are friends.

Bela Karolyi