English Major Sayings

#1. I consider myself a writer who happens to write about history, rather than a historian. I was an English major in college. What I've learned about history is in the field, so to speak. Going into the archives and working with it directly.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#2. I was an English major at UCLA when I was 18, and then I left after a year to start acting. I was educating myself during that time.

James Franco

#3. I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking.

Philipp Meyer

#4. I'm going to do what any self-respecting English major would do: pull something out of my ass.

Beth Kendrick

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

Jeffrey Eugenides

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

Christie Hefner

#7. As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#8. Don't fuck with an English major. They keep lots of useless crap trapped in their heads. Once in a while they let some of it out and it bites you square on the ass.

P.C. Cast

#9. I was an English major in college!

Maggie Siff

#10. 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

#11. I ended up doing four or five plays in college and being an English major with my thesis in language acquisition, which I was planning to study in graduate school.

Carrie Coon

#12. You're an English major, aren't you?"
"Hey!" Immediately retreating, Keith swatted at him with a dishcloth. "Leave my brain alone. It's resting."
"Sorry, sorry." He leaned away, hands up to display his surrender. "I didn't mean it, I take it back."
"You'd better

Matthew Haldeman-Time

#13. I have no scientific training at all. I was an English major in school. Everything I learned about science I've learned as a journalist would, finding out what I needed to know.

Michael Pollan

#14. 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

#15. I was an English major, so I love discussing possibilities and alternate theories.

William Mapother

#16. Finding a technical cofounder would have been difficult for me. I was an English major and didn't know any computer programmers.

Jessica Livingston

#17. I read good. I was an English major.

P. J. O'Rourke

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

Sue Grafton

#19. I never got any training in how to write novels as an English major at Oberlin, but I got some great training for writing novels from anthropology and from Margaret Mead.

Alan Furst

#20. I said I was an English major, that I wanted to write someday, that I read the way other people ate chocolate.

Francesca Lia Block

#21. I did try to go to college and try to be an English major.

Hamish Linklater

#22. I was an English major.

Jenna Bush

#23. It's my job as best friend to make sure he's not a serial killer. Or an English major, not sure which one's worse.

Shelly Crane

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. Absolutely, but let me qualify that-I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity.

Christine O'Donnell

#27. He's a cocky SOB. He knew the Nick Adams Stories. Probably a frustrated English major who graduated from college qualified to drive a cab.

Peter Heller

#28. I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

Jennifer Weiner

#29. The English major reads because, as rich as the one life he has may be, one life is not enough.

Mark Edmundson

#30. I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University of North Carolina for three years.

Elizabeth Edwards

#31. I was an English major in college, though I ended up getting my degree in "General Stduies" because my grades were too bad to qualify for an English degree.

Josh Lieb

#32. I used to write a lot of songs. I was an English major in college. I was a deluded poet for a year. Totally deluded.

Paul Dano

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

Nick McDonell

#34. Being an English major prepares you for impersonating authority.

Garrison Keillor

#35. 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

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

Stephen Ambrose

#37. I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.

Garrison Keillor

#38. I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published.

Sally Kirkland

#39. I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.

Nikki Giovanni

#40. English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it.

Leon Uris

#41. I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it:
The past, present, and future walk into a bar - it was tense.

Kelli Russell Agodon

#42. I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I've brought scientific thinking to literature. There's been very little gratitude for this.

Kurt Vonnegut

#43. There are lots of concerns facing English football but for me the major one is the way in which football clubs are run by owners, whether they are growing organically and sustainably and how that is being policed by the football authorities.

Gary Neville

#44. It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case."

Sydney J. Harris

#45. I love puppies, and I love animals in general. Besides that, I do martial arts: extreme martial arts. I also play real guitar and drums, and sing. And I'm taking some college classes, hoping to major in English and creative writing.

Cameron Monaghan

#46. In 1990, I was an undergraduate freshman archeology major sneaking over to the English building and unearthing an amazing repository of books I'd never even suspected. By 1998, I'd have my Ph.D.

Stephen Graham Jones

#47. Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries.

Douglas Coupland

#48. Sometimes I feel the only way I can get a major publisher interested in mental illness is if I find a character who has bipolar disorder and is also a love-sick vampire attending an English school called Hogwarts. But I'm not giving up.

Pete Earley

#49. I studied English literature; I took 2 independent religion classes, but I wasn't a religion major really.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

#50. I will find you another long-forgotten Queen Mab poem in no time. Depend on it. I refuse to let Cody or anyone else know more about English Literature than me. So calm yourself, Elfish, and let an expert take over.

Martin Millar

#51. I wished I hadn't majored in women filling their pockets with stones and sticking their heads into ovens.

Maybe tomorrow the pinhole would widen and I would want to be a marine biologist.

Kat Clark

#52. 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

#53. I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives.

Rachel Weisz

#54. Stop being silly, her name is Reshidatu. It is a pity that our official language is English, and a greater pity that our three major languages is the WaZoBia.

S.A. David

#55. Where's your sketch pad?" I asked.
... "I gave that up," Kay said. "I wasn't very good, so I changed my major."
"To what?"
"To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history."
"I like a woman who knows what she wants."
Kay smiled. "So do I, but I don't know any.

James Ellroy

#56. In college, I was a cartoonist at 'The Daily Northwestern.' So I draw myself. I was an animator. But basically, I went to Northwestern to major in English, wound up in college for two years. Studied animation there. Came to Disney. My first week at Disney was the week that 'Star Wars' came out.

John Musker

#57. I began to parse the sentence. This is what English majors do. It's what we're trained to do. We don't know how to do anything else, except drive cabs.

Gary Reilly

#58. The people who run the major banks have MBAs and wear suits. And when those people in suits come to the homes of people who don't have a high school diploma, don't even speak English, and offer them a home at zero percent down, that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

Ramin Bahrani

#59. Quotation is a noun. Quote is a verb.

Eusebius Clay

#60. My style of singing has always been referred to 'soul' singing when it fact it's more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I'm closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.

Alison Moyet

#61. In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.

Frederick Lenz

#62. The English press treated the world premiere of my first talking picture as a major event.

Gloria Swanson

#63. Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.

Shakira

#64. I went to Gettysburg College, where the famous Civil War battle was fought. I majored in English. I would've liked to major in writing, but they didn't offer a major in that.

Jerry Spinelli

#65. People think I'm selling feminism in my books, but what I'm really doing is writing advertising copy for expensive private colleges that most women can't afford anyway. Oh, and try to find a job with a major in English literature. No luck? Joke's on you, sucker!

Mary Gordon