English Major Quotes

• The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Successful, Numbers, Secret

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Not Shakespeare. In college I took a Shakespeare class because I was an English major, and they had a Summer program called Shakespeare at Winedale, which is out in the German Hill country in Texas , where you go out and live for two months and then you perform three plays at the end of that time.

  Jenna Bush

  Majors

  21 Copy quote

• I was an English major in college!

  Maggie Siff

  College, Majors

  20 Copy quote

• I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.

  Sue Grafton

  Art, College, Humanity

  18 Copy quote

• I had higher math SATs than in English - yet I became an English major in college.

  Christie Hefner

  Math, College, Sat

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer.

  Fred Savage

  Writing, School, Thinking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I read good. I was an English major.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Majors

  "P.J. O'Rourke Takes On 'The Wealth of Nations'". Interview with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. January 8, 2007.

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• I didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.

  Sylvia Plath

  Mother, Jobs, College

  12 Copy quote

• She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Reason, Majors

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2011). “The Marriage Plot: A Novel”, p.20, Macmillan

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• More than anything, being an English major made me more appreciative of authors and what an incredible feat it is to just finish a novel, let alone a really brilliant one.

  Dan Mangan

  Brilliant, Incredibles, Appreciative

  Source: www.songfacts.com

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• I do tend to be an analyzer. I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.

  Cynthia Nixon

  Fun, Secret, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love something for no reason. That's the best kind of love.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Dumb, Honor, Kind

  Natalie Goldberg (2011). “Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life”, p.131, Open Road Media

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• As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work.

  Jim Harrison

  Destiny, Trying, Dozen

  11 Copy quote

• Being an English major prepares you for impersonating authority.

  Garrison Keillor

  Authority, Majors

  5 Copy quote

• Maybe because I began as a writer, I have a good ear for dialogue, and maybe being an English major - and that I also read a lot as a kid - if I hear somebody say something that I think's funny, or I find a situation or story, I'll try to work that into the movie.

  Owen Wilson

  Kids, Thinking, Trying

  Interview with Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, www.interviewmagazine.com. January 15, 2016.

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• In the beginning of college I wanted to be an English major, but then I became interested in international relations.

  Nick McDonell

  College, Relation, Wanted

  5 Copy quote

• My wife, the actress Megan Mullally, was an English major at Northwestern University and loves fiction. Like so many things in my life, she curates things for me. For example, I have the daunting prospect of Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch" waiting for me when I get through my current reading pile.

  Nick Offerman

  Reading, Wife, Waiting

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• As a former English major, I am a sitting duck for Gift Books, and in the past few years I've gotten Dickens, Thackeray, Smollet, Richardson, Emerson, Keats, Boswell and the Brontes, all of them Great, none of them ever read by me, all of them now on a shelf, looking at me and making me feel guilty.

  Garrison Keillor

  Book, Past, Years

  4 Copy quote

• The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Hate, War, College

  4 Copy quote

• When I was in college, I was an English major, but I was part of this great group at Stanford called the Company. We didn't know any better, so we did it all; we did King Lear, we did Hamlet, new plays ... And we did it all in a covered wagon that we took around the Bay Area. We all put our makeup on in one cracked mirror. It was the most fun I've ever had.

  Sigourney Weaver

  Fun, College, Makeup

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I like to say I had a very varied undergraduate education. I was an English major first, and then at the end of my college career I decided I was interested in urban planning. I became an urban studies major, with a minor in poetry. I don't think I knew what I was looking for in my early twenties, but I know I kept not finding it.

  Ayana Mathis

  College, Thinking, Urban

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• My roommate in college in Austin, Texas, was Wes Anderson. Wes always wanted to be a director. I was an English major in college, and he got us to work on a screenplay together. And then, in working on the screenplay, he wanted my brother, Luke, and me to act in this thing. We did a short film that was kind of a first act of what became Bottle Rocket.

  Owen Wilson

  Brother, College, Texas

  Interview with Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, www.interviewmagazine.com. January 15, 2016.

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• The only reason I acted in school was because of the community. I was in the chorus of every play and was never the lead other than one time, but to me it was about the community. I was an English major and my whole goal was to be an English teacher and was lucky enough to get into the playwriting group. The whole experience I had at Brown was eye opening and the most mind-bending experience.

  John Krasinski

  Teacher, Eye, School

  Source: www.lasplash.com

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• I can be a bit of a science geek. I tend more towards reading about brain science, neuroscience. I was an English major, so I love discussing possibilities and alternate theories. Aside from the science aspect of it, the philosophical possibilities are so interesting.

  William Mapother

  Philosophical, Reading, Interesting

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I was an English major in college, I went to a creative-writing program, and all my life, I really read and thought about fiction as a craft and an art form. I feel like I know a lot about it, and can trust my instincts.

  Tom Perrotta

  Art, College, Instinct

  Source: www.avclub.com

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