Deresiewicz Excellent Quotes & Sayings

People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response. If what we say is suitably apt and amusing, the listener will show his delight by emitting a series of uncontrolled high-pitched noises, accompanied by sharp intakes of breath of the sort normally associated with a seizure or heart failure. And by these means we converse. Talking, when you think about it, is a very strange business indeed. — Bill Bryson

So are you saying that we're all just, like, really excellent sheep? — William Deresiewicz

Excellent Sheep is likely to makea lasting mark for three reasons. One, Mr. Deresiewicz spent twenty-four years in the Ivy League, graduating from Columbia and teaching for a decade at Yale.He brings the gory details. Two, the author is a striker, to put it in soccer terms. He's a vivid writer, a literary critic whose headers tend to land in the back corner of the net. Three, his indictment arrives on wheels: He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America.Mr. Deresiewicz's book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness. — Dwight Garner

Not every ten-percenter is an excellent sheep, but a sufficient number are for you to think very carefully before deciding to surround yourself with them. Kids at less prestigious schools are apt to be more interesting, more curious, more open, more appreciative of what they're getting, and far less entitled and competitive. They tend to act like peers instead of rivals. — William Deresiewicz

What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay. — Cormac McCarthy

Today Jesus Christ is being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere example. He is that, but he is infinitely more; He is salvation itself, He is the Gospel of God. — Oswald Chambers

It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate. — Amy Tan

The desire to belong is in every mind. — Debasish Mridha

Without spontaneity in any sport, you cannot succeed. — Eric Cantona

People today find real debate about actual topics difficult, and much prefer the parody of debate which consists of giving a dog a bad name and then beating him for it, and lashing out, too, at anyone who associates with the dog you happen to be beating at the time. — N. T. Wright

I also spoke about the kid who can't be bothered to get A's in every class in high school because they're actually more interested in following their curiosity, so here's another rule of thumb. U.S. News supplies the percentage of freshmen at each college who finished in the highest 10 percent of their high school class. Among the top twenty universities, the number is usually above 90 percent, a threshold that is also reached at several of the top colleges. I'd be wary of schools like that (though I would make an exception for public universities, which draw from disadvantaged high schools from across their respective states). Not every ten-percenter is an excellent sheep, but a sufficient number are for you to think very carefully before deciding to surround yourself with them. — William Deresiewicz

I accomplished what I set out to do, but I lost my discipline and my career. — Pete Maravich

Memory is never pure. And recollection is always coloured by the life lived since — Josephine Hart