A Quote by William Safire

I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.

William Safire

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William Safire
American - Author
December 17, 1929 - September 27, 2009

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter.

Khaled Hosseini

Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

Dean Wesley Smith

I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family.

Andre Dubus III

When you get to readin' about where the music and John Steinbeck and all those people like that come from, the further you go the more interesting it becomes.

Merle Haggard

This all came of a conversation I had with [John] Steinbeck once when we were standing in a men's room somewhere. Steinbeck asked me why I didn't play the banjo any more and I told him that went out with the high-button shoes.

Eddie Condon

Working as a journalist, I was always tempted to lie. I felt I could do dialogue better than the person I was interviewing. I felt I could lie better than Nixon and be more concise than some random person I was covering.

Tim O'Brien

Interviewing is fun. You get to learn things about people other than yourself. When you're being interviewed, you're talking about things you've already lived. I've already done that, so what fun is that?

Pat Smear

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Kurt Vonnegut

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

John Steinbeck

When you are interviewing refugees, each person you talk to has a different story that could come from a horror movie. So many people talk about seeing their families get murdered before their eyes. Then I go to Central Park, and people are talking about their third divorce and paying tuition.

Brandon Stanton

[ William Ayers] is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

Barack Obama

My American undergraduate education probably gave me a better idea of the fundamentals of what European civilization is about, better than the undergraduate education you get at most European universities.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Whether you're talking about Chris Christie, or you're talking about Rick Perry or Scott Walker or John Kasich, there's more interesting evolution at the state level than there is in Washington.

Newt Gingrich

Maybe what I admired most about John Steinbeck is that he never mortgaged his 45-acre heart for a suite in an ivory tower.

Tom Robbins

Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

Tom Shales

The language was not a big problem because my English was getting better every year. So, I really felt comfortable and I had trust in myself, you know, talking to people. Even though I know I was making mistakes, I still kept talking. So that's how I learned English.

Cedi Osman

A Quote by William Safire

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