Back In College Quotes & Sayings

I was feeling that I was the in the dead-end circuit from 1980 to 1983, and I didn't know what else to do. I remember doing a show in some college town, in a tiny club, and afterward some fans came back. I thought I had done good gig and they were going to tell me that. — Iggy Pop

I played piano back in my elementary school days and I sang a cappella back in college. — Masi Oka

I'd send them both letters wishing them safe travels. Maybe they'd send me a postcard. Maybe they'd call when they got back, or when they settled in at college. Maybe they wouldn't, and they'd end up in the book. It was uncertain, like life.
I was starting to be okay with that. — Sarah Ockler

When my mother had four girls, and she could tell her marriage was falling apart, she went back to college and got her degree in music and education. — Andie MacDowell

Remember, you can be exalted without a college degree. You can be exalted without being slender and beautiful. You can be exalted without having a successful career. You can be exalted if you are not rich and famous. So focus the best that you can on those things in life that will lead you back to the presence of God - keeping all things in their proper balance. — M. Russell Ballard

The show is escapism. If you look back to when I was in college, all the girls in the sorority houses were gathered around watching soap operas. That was the escapism, the show that was giving you something you couldn't have. Now, you go into any sorority house, there are 50 to 100 girls piled in watching The Bachelor. We are the modern-day soap opera. — Chris Harrison

Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors. — Sharon Olds

I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. — Steve Jobs

Look what can happen in this country, they'd say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for 19 years, so poor she can't afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car. Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolley-bus. — Sylvia Plath

The idea of living there, of not having to go back ever again to asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture; of living there with Charles and Camilla and Henry and Francis and maybe even Bunny; of no one marrying or going home or getting a job in a town a thousand miles away or doing any of the traitorous things friends do after college; of everything remaining exactly as it was, that instant - the idea was so truly heavenly that I'm not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did. — Donna Tartt

My first job out of college was six weeks of picking fruit alongside a dozen or so men from Mexico. The orchard was in Emmett, Idaho. The men spent almost nothing on themselves. Their paychecks went directly to their families back home. — Will Hobbs

You going back?' he asks.
'Where?'
'College,' he says. 'You plan on going back?'
And before she can think of a proper answer, she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind:
'Why would I?'
'To finish your degree,' he says.
'Yeah, I get it,' she says. 'But - why?'
'To get a better job?'
'I'm okay with this one,' she says.
'Yeah,' he says, shifting in his seat again. 'But - I don't know. Can't you make more money?'
'Linus,' she says, leveling her eyes at him. 'I was an English major. — Patrick Anderson Jr.

Noises and smells, those can bring back powerful memories. I remember when I was going to school one Fourth of July, and there were a lot of fireworks going off. I knew that I was in Richmond. I knew that I was a college student. But I thought people were shooting at me. — Kevin Powers

At one edge of the base, pressed between the fenceline and the sea, shimmered the pale archways and columns, the madrone and wind-shaped cypresses of the clifftop campus of College of the Surf. Against the somber military blankness at its back, here was a lively beachhead of drugs, sex, and rock and roll, the strains of subversive music day and night, accompanied by tambourines and harmonicas, reaching like fog through the fence, up the dry gulches and past the sentinel antennas, the white dishes and masts, the steel equipment sheds, finding the ears of sentries attentuated but ominous, like hostile-native sounds in a movie about white men fighting savage tribes. — Thomas Pynchon

I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.' — Susan Minot

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country ... I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this ... It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. — Steve Jobs

When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance. — Jodie Foster

Can we get back to how we're going to kill Nick? And what's this about a dead body? You'd better start talking quick, Ivy, 'cause I'm not going to play hide-and-seek with a dead guy in my trunk. I did that in college, and I'm not going to do it again." A smile quirked Ivy's mouth.
"Really?" she asked, and I flushed. — Kim Harrison

For the past thirty-nine years since I had graduated from college, I had called my parents on Sundays. They had expected and looked forward to the ritual. After Dad died, I still called Mom on Sundays. Most of the time I dreaded the call because she had become more and more insular and was full of complaints about the assisted living facility, the other residents, her health, everything. She had become narrow in her interests in life, more negative, more critical, and unhappier. I was reminded of something I had heard from a psychologist about what happens as we age. He said we become more of who we are, not less. Our energy to fight back the negative attributes we all possess is not as strong as we get older. So we can become more cantankerous, more irritable. I also remembered what my father had often said: "There but for the grace of God go I." That Sunday I placed the — Janis Heaphy Durham

You know what I was thinking? [Ruthie] got so excited when she was spouting this ahistorical countertextual nonsense, and I caught myself thinking, 'What an idiot her teacher must be,' and thinking about her teacher made me realize - the kind of excitement she was showing as she mindlessly spouted back the nonsense she learned in college, that's just like the excitement some of my own students show. And it occurred to me that what we professors think of as a 'brilliant student' is nothing but a student who is enthusiastically converted to whatever idiotic ideas we've been teaching them."
"Self-knowledge is a painful thing," said Esther. "To learn that your best students are parrots after all. — Orson Scott Card

Make me an offer, " I said at last. "Write it up, and give me a point-by-point outline of why you're a good would-be suitor. "
He started to laugh, then saw my face. "Seriously? That's like homework. There's a reason I'm not in college. " I snapped my fingers. "Get to it, Ivashkov. I want to see you put in a good day's work. "
I expected a joke or a brush-off until later, but instead, he said, "Okay. "
"Okay?"
"Yep. I'm going to go back to my room right now to start drafting my assignment. "
I stared incredulously as he reached for his coat. I had never seen Adrian move that fast when any kind of labor was involved. Oh no. What had I gotten myself into? — Richelle Mead

I buy an ice-cream sandwich at the Stop-N-Go on my way home. The taste takes me back to childhood. Back when life was dreaming about things to come and believing that if you really wanted something bad enough, it could and would be yours. I remember praying for a bike for Christmas, and there it was. We prayed for Minnie's gerbil to live and it did. Later, in high school, I asked God for guidance about where to go to college, and that very day, like a kite floating straight from heaven, the acceptance letter came from UNC-Charlotte. — Alice J. Wisler

When the war ended, more than twelve million men and women put their uniforms aside and returned to civilian life. They went back to work at their old jobs or started small businesses; they became big-city cops and firemen; they finished their degrees or enrolled in college for the first time; they became schoolteachers, — Tom Brokaw

When I went to college, I did clothing and textiles. It really wasn't until I moved to New York, my second night in, I did stand-up. I took a wild left turn, and instead of going back and finishing school at FIT, I started doing stand-up and acting. — Melissa McCarthy

Aamir, recalling back to the idyllic days of his college youth, pictured himself once again sitting quietly on a familiar neighbourhood rooftop. He often enjoyed relaxing there, alone or with friends, while watching the colourful fluttering prayer flags on rooftop poles, especially in the warmth of an early evening breeze, as wispy clouds drifted against the jagged Himalayan backdrop. He has oft times wondered, ever since his childhood, if the prayers to the spirits of the dead, flying out from those slowly tattering rags, will ever really be answered. Perhaps it will be in another place, in another time, when we're living another life that we shall finally know. Aamir had calmly thought at the time. He was that sort of philosophical guy. — Andrew James Pritchard

I went to the Westminster College for Men in Missouri, which is what it was called back then, and transferred to the University of Denver where I ultimately got my degree. — Ted Shackelford

harbinger, n.
When I was in third grade, we would play that game at recess where you'd twist an apple while holding on to its stem, reciting the alphabet, one letter for each turn. When the stem broke, the name of your true love would be revealed. Whenever I played, I always made sure that the apple broke at K. At the time I was doing this because no one in my grade had a name that began with K. Then, in college, it seemed like everyone I fell for was a K. It was enough to make me give up on the letter, and I didn't even associate it with you until later on, when I saw your signature on a credit card receipt, and the only legible letter was that first K. I will admit: When I got home that night, I went to the refrigerator and took out another apple. But I stopped twisting at J and put the apple back. You see, I didn't trust myself. I knew that even if the apple wasn't ready, I was going to pull that stem — David Levithan

In college, the fans cheer the whole game, from start to finish. In the NBA it's really laid back. — Nate Robinson

I just developed my act way back in the late '80s. I went to college in Georgia, so I picked up the Southern accent. I talked like that with my friends all the time, because it was fun. It was funny ... All my friends were real Southern. We're buddies, so I'd say stuff to make them laugh. So that was pretty much it. — Larry The Cable Guy

She loved all the wolves behind her house, but she loved one of them most of all.
And this one loved her back. He loved her back so hard that even the things that weren't special about her became special: the way she tapped her pencil on her teeth, the off-key songs she sang in the shower, how when she kissed him he knew it meant for ever.
Hers was a memory made up of snapshots: being dragged through the snow by a pack of wolves, first kiss tasting of oranges, saying goodbye behind a cracked windshield.
A life made up of promises of what could be: the possibilities contained in a stack of college applications, the thrill of sleeping under a strange roof, the future that lay in Sam's smile.
It was a life I didn't want to leave behind.
It was a life I didn't want to forget.
I wasn't done with it yet. There was so much more to say. — Maggie Stiefvater

At twenty years old, Michael had vague plans to make changes in his life, but turning blue whilst stood in a walk-in bath in an old people's home wasn't one of them. Usually boys of his age might consider changes along the lines of smoking less grass at home, at college or at work, to be a good idea. Or maybe spending less time on that solitary pursuit common to men of his age across the globe. Enjoyable though he found it, he was going to cut back on the procrastination, but that was going to have to wait. — Dylan Perry

What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.
The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.'
'I don't know it.'
'It's a poem.'
'I gathered.'
'I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'
Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.
'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'
I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?
'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.'
I learned the poem in college and it stuck. — Steven Rowley

I stared back at him with something that, I realize now, was close to cellular recognition. In one glance, he recalled my father, my first boyfriend, my college love, my future. — Alison Singh Gee

I was going to be an architect. I graduated with a degree in architecture and I had a scholarship to go back to Princeton and get my Masters in architecture. I'd done theatricals in college, but I'd done them because it was fun. — James Stewart

The whole party followed, with the exception of Scythrop, who threw himself into his arm-chair, crossed his left foot over his right knee, placed the hollow of his left hand on the interior ancle of his left leg, rested his right elbow on the elbow of the chair, placed the ball of his right thumb against his right temple, curved the forefinger along the upper part of his forehead, rested the point of the middle finger on the bridge of his nose, and the points of the two others on the lower part of the palm, fixed his eyes intently on the veins in the back of his left hand, and sat in this position like the immoveable Theseus, who, as is well known to many who have not been at college, and to some few who have, sedet, oeternumque sedebit. We hope the admirers of the minitiae in poetry and romance will appreciate this accurate description of a pensive attitude. — Thomas Love Peacock

A young professor I watched in action at one of our large eastern colleges used to stand with his back to the class and mumble explanations of blackboard problems. He was "let out" at the end of two years because students refused to attend his classes. He was given an evasive reason for his dismissal and he left with justifiable bitterness toward the administration. If someone had told him the truth he could have avoided this denouement. Sometimes professors go on for years without any conception of remediable faults which irritate their listeners. — Mary Barnett Gilson

I had just come back from an incident with the police and a snowmobile when Pat Cadell called from New York, saying that he was with a bunch of New York Times reporters in a bar and they were curious to know what I thought about what Clinton had to say about marijuana - that he had tried it in college but "didn't inhale." I was embarrassed. What do you mean, "didn't inhale?" What the hell do you think we smoke it for?
I said "Only a fool would say a thing like that. It's just a disgrace to an entire generation. — Hunter S. Thompson

[NINA]
When I was a child I stayed wide awake
Climbed to the highest place
On every fire escape
Restless to climb

I got every scholarship
Saved every dollar
The first to go to college
How do I tell them why
I'm coming back home? — Lin-Manuel Miranda

I have a lot of brothers and sisters, and each movie has helped pay for tuition. And then I was like, I only have one left in college, so why am I doing this? But now I want to go back to Italy and live on a farm in Tuscany. — Rose McGowan

I've learned what my contemporaries will have learned in their first terms at college, or university - that the first friends you make in a new place are the ones you usually spend the next three terms trying to lose, and that it's the people who are quietly holding back, and standing in the corner, that you will want to be with, when your second year comes around. — Caitlin Moran

A traveling salesman was driving in the country when his car broke down. He hiked several miles to a farmhouse and asked the farmer if there was a place he could stay overnight. "Sure," said the farmer, "My wife died several years ago, and my two daughters are twenty-one and twenty-three, but they're off to college, and I'm all by myself, so I have lots of room to put you up."
Hearing this, the salesman turned around and started walking back toward the highway.
The farmer called after him, "Didn't you hear what I said? I have lots of room."
"I heard you," said the salesman, "but I think I'm in the wrong joke. — Thomas Cathcart

I did a lot of theater in college, and I knew that not many people make it, but I just figured, 'Well, I really want to try acting while I'm young, and I don't ever want to look back and say that I never gave it a try.' I fully figured I'd be back in grad school - probably for psychology. — Hank Azaria

If I had let myself off the hook in college, I could have enjoyed myself a lot more. Knowing that I can't have those years back, I have learned to get the most out of living in the now. — Chris Pine

Dale's face is older. Just a little. Around the eyes and mouth. The skin of his neck. The back of his hands. Maybe not, he thinks, turning on the faucet, letting the water grow warm then hot.
He begins shaving his lubricated chin and cheeks. Chrysalis hibernation slows things down, but it doesn't stop them, not all together, and he finds himself to currently resemble something between a derelict and a college student, neither one ringing particularly desirable in his present mood. — David Edward Wagner

I went through a change in my life and my career where I finally understood how to train and prepare. I finally understood what it meant, and I've had so many fantasies about being able to go back and be 16 again. And redo parts of my high school career. Redo all of my college career. Redo my attempt to make an Olympic team. — Chael Sonnen

Growing up in Europe, tight clothing is pretty standard. When I got to college, clothes were loose, so I was going toward more loose stuff. As soon as I got back to New York, I started wearing suits 25% of the year. Then, I realized how important it is for the suit to really fit you and be tight. — Carl Hagelin

Socratic, they call it in college. All kinds of back and forth, designed to elicit truths implicitly known by all rational beings. — Lee Child

Each word that she left behind is precious, including the simple three I rediscovered a few days after Marina's memorial service. Her long-forgotten note, scrawled with a dry-erase marker on the back of a BB&N book slip and left on my desk when she was visiting from college, simply read, "Marina was here!" Marina was here. Yes, she was, in so many ways. And with an exclamation point. My hope is that through this book and Marina's many legacies, we may all still hear her and be inspired by how she used her fleeting time to be passionately, vibrantly, fully here. - Beth McNamara August 2014 — Marina Keegan

Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I've been a Mac guy for almost my entire adult life. I wrote my first college papers on a typewriter, but by the end of my freshman year - almost 20 years ago - I was on an IBM PC. Then, in 1984, I found the Mac, and I never looked back. — John Battelle

Put yourself in Hamlet's shoes. Suppose you were a prince, and you came back from college to discover that your uncle had murdered your father and married your mother, and you fell in love with a beautiful girl and mistakenly murdered her father, and then she went crazy and drowned herself. What would you do? Go back for a masters? — Art Buchwald

What would have happened if Derrick Rose had torn his knee in college, or Greg Oden? It would have cost them millions of dollars. They were lucky, coming out early. I'm not saying don't go to college. There are plenty of players like Shaq [O'Neal] who went back and graduated. I commend that. But do it at your leisure - don't hurt your finances. — Sonny Vaccaro

If you have been living your life saying to yourself, "I will be happy when I have a better house," "I will be happy when I get a job or promotion," "I will be happy when the kids are through college," "I will be happy when we have more money," "I will be happy when I can travel," or "I will be happy when my business is a success," you will never have those things because your thoughts are defying the way love works. They're defying the law of attraction. You have to be happy first, and give happiness, to receive happy things! It can't happen any other way, because whatever you want to receive in life, you must give first! You are in command of your feelings, you are in command of your love, and the force of love will give back to you whatever you give out. — Rhonda Byrne

Max was fascinated by the woman and more than a little curious about what she might be up to. Sarah Johnson had come from a two-parent, affluent home with a squeaky-clean past. She'd been the golden girl, high school cheerleader, valedictorian and had apparently glided through college without making a ripple, coming out with a bachelor of arts degree in literature. She'd married well, had six children and then one winter night, for some unknown reason, she'd driven her car into the Yellowstone River. Her body was never found. Because there were no skid marks on the highway, it had looked like a suicide. Foul play had never been suspected.
That was twenty-two years ago. Now she was back - with no memory of those years or why she'd apparently tried to take her own life.
Max wanted this story more than he wanted a hot cup of coffee this morning. — B. J. Daniels

And I was looking for escape routes all the time. Ways to not fully be there, to be distracted by other lives, the lives of people I knew from high school and college that were happening in different states and cities. I would waste hours comparing my life to theirs, sitting the two of them side by side and circling the things that seemed out of place in my own life, like the "What's Wrong?" pictures in the back of the Highlights magazines. I don't exactly know what happened that night after — Hannah Brencher

I wanted to double-check with you that your mailing address is still the same as the one you sent us back in April? If you're a college student I know address changes are really common at this time of year! — Marilynne Robinson

I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A. — Kevin Dunn

She went to college where I knew she would call everyone honey and darling and all the men would love her. They would all love her and try to own her - try to break her legs to keep her from moving, and each of them would be frustrated and disappointed in the end. It was about loving someone who would never love you back or, maybe loving someone who loved everything, everybody, the same. She was too much and we all sacrificed a bit of ourselves for her. — Marc E. Fitch

He wants to play major college football at a university far away, where nobody will know about his tragic family history. Then he wants to play in the NFL.

Every catch brings him closer to that reality. That's how he thinks of it, anyway. Every time he runs downfield, sees the ball in the air, and hears the defensive back laboring to catch up, whenever he feels that ball fall out of the sky and into his waiting hands, he inches closer to his goals. — Neil Hayes

I remember a distinct moment when it was my junior year of college, and the content I was making was changing and not really myself, and I tried to switch back to just putting me out there. I'm happy that happened really early in my career, because that was before I started doing podcasts or writing. — Tyler Oakley

I mean there's a college kid left in everyone. I bet you, too, if you could go back you would for a night or two, so why not? My brother's still in college, my little brother, so it's always good to go back and get a little glimpse of it and to hang out with him for a weekend or two. — Rob Gronkowski

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town. — T.C. Boyle

I believe everything learned in college is an answer to a question that someone has posed. Questions get posed differently and the answers that come back transport us to places we never knew existed. — Gordon Gee

It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community. — Samuel Alito

She went on to Seishin University, the famous women's private college, and studied abroad in France for two years. A couple of years after she got back I had a chance to see her, and when I did, I was floored. I'm not sure how to put it, but she seemed faded. Like something that's been exposed to strong sunlight for a long time and the color fades. She looked much the same as before. Still beautiful, still with a nice figure ... but she seemed paler, fainter than before. It made me feel like I should grab the TV remote to ramp up the color intensity. It was a weird experience. It was hard to imagine that someone could, in the space of just a few years, visibly diminish like that. — Haruki Murakami

Yesterday you were riding on my shoulders," he murmured. "The house was full of noise. Clomping up and down the steps,doors slamming. Scattered toys. I don't know how many times I stepped on one of those damned little cars of Brady's/"
Turning back, he ran a hand over her hair. "I miss that.I miss all of you."
"Daddy." In one fluid movement she rose and slid her arms around him.
"It's the way it's supposed to work. Three of you off at college, Brendon moving around to get a handle on the busines of things.It's what he wants. And you, building your own.But..I miss the crowd of you."
"I promise to slam the door the very first chance I get."
"That might help."
"Sentimental softie.I love that about you."
"Lucky for me. — Nora Roberts

I was in college, but I got kicked out. It was a very free school, but I created a "bad impression." Like I was a bit more fiery in those days. At the time I got kicked out, I knew exactly what I was going to do and didn't even bother to go back for a leaving certificate. Then I was singing in folk clubs around Birmingham and playing jazz in clubs on Sundays. — Steve Winwood

I was single for six years and during those six years I went back to college and got my degree in Social Work and then ... while I was single ... Barney came here to Portsmouth on vacation. — Betty Hill

If you wanted to create jobs in a way that has minimal effect on the deficit but has government action, the two best things you could do are the infrastructure bank and a simple SBA-like loan guarantee for all building retrofits, where the contractor or the energy-service company guarantees the savings. So that allows the bank to loan money to let a school or a college or a hospital or a museum or a commercial building unencumbered by debt to loan it on terms that are longer, so you can pay it back only from your utility savings. You could create a million jobs doing that. — William J. Clinton

Going through college a Red Sox fan and knowing the history behind everything that was going on back in the '80s and finally getting a chance to win a World Series for this great city and bringing it back after 86 years, it was truly special, and it's one of the highlights that I'll remember for a long time. — Tim Wakefield

To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life. — David McCullough

How dare you touch my cookies, you bastard!" Jason said in utter disgust before popping the cookie into his mouth and heading back to his house.
"Damn those looked good, too," Brad grumbled.
Haley sighed. "Don't worry I have a second plate on my counter." The words were barely out of her mouth when Jason abruptly changed course and headed towards her house.
"Well, there was," she said, watching Jason walk into her house like he owned it. A minute later he walked out of her house, carrying both plates and the gallon of milk she had in her fridge. He headed back to his house, but not before he glared at Brad. "You cookie thieving bastard," they heard him mutter.
Brad rolled his eyes, chuckling. "And people wonder how I lost weight rooming with him in college. — R.L. Mathewson

For my first week as a new boy at Radley College, back in the summer of 1979, I was followed around by a film crew. — James Lovegrove

I automatically leaned back, my head fitting into that spot between his neck and his shoulder. Again, the cliched romantic in me wondered how we seemed to fit so perfectly, two pieces of a jigsaw, and have such different, clashing personalities... I didn't care how bad we were for each other or that he'd be off to college soon; I just remembered that I was in love with him. — Beth Reekles

I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories. — Martha Wells

The Replacements are the foundation for a lot of what came after in alternative and college rock. Let It Be is their best record and has the most diverse collection of songs. Some pop stuff, some heavy stuff, and some real moments of beauty like 'Sixteen Blue' and 'Androgynous.' It's a record I always go back to. — Craig Finn

The Black Panthers was what we would call today a criminal gang that was formed by Huey Newton. Now, interestingly enough, I knew Huey Newton before he formed the Black Panthers. He was a student of mine when I was a teacher, instructor at Oakland City College back in the very early 1960s. — Edwin Meese

Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.' — Jeff Ament

When I was broke, no one ever offered to buy me a beer. Now that I have quite a bit of money, everybody tries to buy me beers. Where were all these people back when I was in college and broke? — Chris Moneymaker

Social life was different for me in college. I didn't go to as many parties as my friends did. I didn't join a sorority because I knew I couldn't make a long-term commitment. I was constantly traveling back and forth from Silicon Valley to Austin for internships. It was hard, but it was worth it for where I wanted to go. — Brit Morin

I grew up in Europe, and soccer was the first organized game I played. When we moved back to the U.S. in the middle of 4th grade, I switched to American football and stopped playing competitively until college, when I played intramurals. — Andrew Luck

I criticize the NFL in many ways, but I think it's made great strides. I think college basketball, great strides. College football means so much to alumni, doesn't it? It sort of represents the school. It's when you go back; it's at the beginning of the school year. — Frank Deford

After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school. — Chris Parnell

My mother is Afro-Caribbean and my father is Caucasian-American, and I was born in Pennsylvania and moved to the Cayman Islands when I was about 2. So I grew up there with my mother, and it's really all I know. I grew up there until it was time to go to college, and that's when I moved back to America. — Grace Gealey

I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater. — Nancy Allen

I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. — Virginia Woolf

As he wrote, the candle in the window kept flickering, and despite his desk lamp the flickering distracted him. He sat back in the old wooden school chair he'd had since college and heard the reassuring squeak of the wood under him. At the firm he was failing to even register what was needed of him. Daily now he faced column after of column of meaningless numbers he was supposed to make square with company claims. He was making mistakes with a frequency that was frightening, and he feared, more than he had in the first days following my disappearance, that he would not be able to support his remaining children.

~pgs 135-136; Susie's father on death — Alice Sebold

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a bit before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away. — Bret Easton Ellis

Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees; Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees' corner ... The efficiently triumphant Yankee maching is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel? — Gay Talese

I lived in New York for a long time. Right after college I went there. So I got my first cell phone in New York. Back when you would flip the phone up. Way back when. — Stephanie Beatriz

When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was. — Elizabeth McCracken

She got out and shut the door without looking back, picking her way through the snow to the black wooden door in the college wall. At least she hadn't told him not to follow. He watched as she carefully brushed the snow off the latch with her rolled umbrella before touching it with her suede gloves. She left the door half open behind her. He followed. When he reached the door he saw she had paused on the garden path leading to her hall and was doing something in the snow with the tip of her umbrella. Still not looking back, she moved on without waiting for him. When he reached the spot he saw that she had written 'I love you' in the snow. It was that night, he believed ever after, that she became pregnant. — Alan Judd

Now. 1973. Exactly." He tipped back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. "So much changed in the sixties, the war, the rights of women, civil rights, the vote, protest against the war. On and on. I was getting my Ph.D. in Chicago and you were in college but that time was upheaval with a purpose. Now we've drawn back into our shells, wondering what we have done and what do we believe.? And is there any purpose to our lives? — Susan Richards Shreve

When I told my sister, who was a fashion designer in college, what I wanted to do, she said I was crazy. But once I got started, I couldn't turn back. Kimberly Goodwin, Snapping Turtle Kids — Holly Hurd

Which college?'
'Hmm?'
'Which college do you go to?'
Fletcher nodded. 'Yes.'
'I'm sorry?'
'Oh,' Fletcher said, and laughed.
Valkyrie's parents looked at Fletcher in near bewilderment. Fletcher looked back at them in total bewilderment. Valkyrie shook her head. — Derek Landy

The weapon, our weapon, is the desire and tendency to answer a simple question: What can I do to make this work? In any situation, what can I do to get what I want? Some people, after college, will move back home and sit in their parents' basements, blaming the unpredictable economy and the truly bizarre job market. That's how they will make this world work for them. But not us. The ones who refuse to take no for an answer. We will make our way in spite of the fact that the America this generation has been given is not the America that this generation was told we would get. Is this the land of opportunity? No. Now we're dealing with the land of strategy. Obstacles? We must see none. Dilemmas? They must be all the more fun. We will succeed. We just have to find a way. — Paul Downs Colaizzo

In presidential campaign I released a 65-page file from the Syracuse University College of Law that showed poor grades, back in college, also. If I were plagiarizing consistently, my grades would have been better. — Joe Biden

When I went to college at the University of Nevada back in Las Vegas, I got tricked into singing in choir. The first thing we did was the Mozart 'Requiem.' That was the piece that changed my life overnight. — Eric Whitacre

In assembling this group of portraits of women, I'm aware that I'm treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men's depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand's book Women Are Beautiful in the school library and being shocked that it hadn't been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest. — Alec Soth

I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America
the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians
none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen
either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide
and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it
all of it
seems to have led me to where we are, here and now. — David Levithan