Digress Quotes & Sayings

Am I boring you? I don't really care, I suppose, but I'll be more comfortable if I knew all this interested you. No doubt when I get the hang of storytelling, after a chapter or two, I'll go faster and digress less often. — John Barth

Snippets from here and there - she's old, she tends to digress — Kavita Kane

In terms of style, too, I think I've been working with a somewhat limited
although intentionally limited
set of tools. So I'm attempting to be a bit looser as I start stories off. To digress. To make interesting mistakes. — Kelly Link

E. A. Poe defines a short story as readable in a single sitting. I imagine a "single sitting" was longer back in his day. But I digress again. — Gabrielle Zevin

WE think we have advanced too rapidly. Let us go back a little. Before our last attempt to overcome the difficulties of dream distortion through our technique, we had decided that it would be best to avoid them by limiting ourselves only to those dreams in which distortion is either entirely absent or of trifling importance, if there are such. But here again we digress from the history of the evolution of our knowledge, for as a matter of fact we become aware of dreams entirely free of distortion only after the consistent application of our method of interpretation and after complete analysis of the distorted dream. — Sigmund Freud

One day while Lloyd George was making a political speech before a big crowd, a heckler yelled, "Wait a minute, Mr. George. Isn't it true your grandfather used to peddle tinware around here in an oxcart hauled by a donkey?" Lloyd George replied, "I digress just a moment and thank the gentlemen for calling that to my attention. It is true, my dear old grandfather used to peddle tinware with an old cart and a donkey. As a matter of fact, after this meeting is over, if my friend will come with me, I will show him that old cart, but I never knew until this minute what became of the ass." — David Lloyd George

Beer may cause you to digress - and lead a happier life. — Michael Jackson

There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure I'd ever write a short story again because I had started writing novels, and I am fundamentally a lazy person, and the fact is that a novel is a lazy person's form, really. That is, you can amble; you can digress. — Elizabeth McCracken

Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress? — T. S. Eliot

She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and "goes in"
to use an expression of Alfred's
for Woman's mission, Woman's rights, Woman's wrongs, and everything that is woman's with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. "Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you!" I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, "but don't overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not ALL Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it." However, I digress. — Charles Dickens

A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore. — Terry Brooks

The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal. — W. Somerset Maugham

I've always been in two minds about women, really. On the one hand, I always liked the fact they had waists, and we hadn't. That aroused in me a feeling of - how shall I put it? - well, pleasure. Yes, pleasurable feelings. Still, on the other hand, they did stab Marat with a penknife, and Marat was Incorruptible, so they shouldn't have stabbed him. That fairly killed off the pleasure. Then again, like Karl Marx, I've always loved women for their little weaknesses - i.e. they've got to sit down to pee, and I've always liked that - that's always filled me with - well, what the hell - a sort of warm feeling. Yes, pleasurable warmth. But then again they did shoot at Lenin, with a revolver no less! And that put a damper on the pleasure as well. I mean, fair enough, sitting down to pee, but shooting at Lenin? That's a sick joke, talking about pleasure after that.

However, I digress. — Venedikt Erofeev

Is it time uninterrupted? Only the present comprehended? Are our thoughts nothing but passing trains, no stops, devoid of dimension, whizzing by massive posters with repeating images? Catching a fragment from a window seat, yet another fragment from the next identical frame? If I write in the present yet digress, is that still real time? Real time, I reasoned, cannot be divided into sections like numbers on the face of a clock. If I write about the past as I simultaneously dwell in the present, am I still in real time? Perhaps there is no past or future, only the perpetual present that contains this trinity of memory. — Patti Smith

As I am a work in progress, you shall see me more or less? Don't shake me out if I digress. As of me less, from me more of my work, I guess. — Ana Claudia Antunes

Reform is the mission from which we shall not digress; it is an expression of belief and determination between us and our people. With the help of Allah, we will proceed forward in this promising national process within the natural progress of the life cycle and the development of people and nation. — Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa

When Love Was New

When love was new
and life was young,
and once we walked
in gracious sun,
I never dreamt of darker days,
or feared that fate had cruel ways.

When life was strong
and love was free,
and time was once
eternity -
we never planned for more or less,
nor stopped to think we should digress.

When love was young
and life was new,
and everything
was once our due,
I never doubted what I owned,
nor knew the cost was merely loaned.

Now love is tried
and life is old,
and still my feet
drag down the road -
not knowing where it all has gone,
nor how much more it still goes on.

But life grows new
and love gets old,
and this tired heart
stays off the cold -
not caring it compares with fools,
nor wise enough to fear the rules.
-Drea Damara — Drea Damara

If we had any leisure we would here digress a little on that ingratitude which so many writers have observed to spring up in the people in all free governments towards their great men; who, while they have been consulting the good of the public, by raising their own greatness, in which the whole body (as the kingdom of France thinks itself in the glory of their grand monarch) was so deeply concerned, have been sometimes sacrificed by those very people for whose glory the said great men were so industriously at work: and this from a foolish zeal for a certain ridiculous imaginary thing called liberty, to which great men are observed to have a great animosity. — Henry Fielding

Annabeth rubbed the clay beads on her necklace, the way she does when she's thinking. She looked beautiful. But I digress. — Rick Riordan

He found he was popular, known for a loose style and an appealing willingness to digress. "We spend most of our time talking about Twin Peaks and The Simpsons so they think I am an okay caballero," he told Markson. — D.T. Max

We can never be entirely original, as artists or as people. The genius and vision of those who came before us is too great for us to digress from entirely. Though, as creatures that are compelled to test and surpass our own creative abilities, we must always strive for that originality in everything we do in order to move the world forward. — Jessica Lave

As survivors and procreators, we unravel stories that at their root are not dissimilar from the habitual behaviors seen in nature. But as beings who know they will die we digress into episodes and epics that are altogether dissociated from the natural world. We may isolate this awareness, distract ourselves from it, anchor our minds far from its shores, and sublimate it as a motif in our sagas. Yet at no time and in no place are we protected from being tapped on the shoulder and reminded, "You're going to die, you know." However much we try to ignore it, our consciousness haunts us with this knowledge. Our heads were baptized in the font of death; they are doused with the horror of moribundity. — Thomas Ligotti

Effective leaders do not fear passion. They welcome it. But from time to time passionate discussions digress into personal attacks, and real people get really hurt. In my view, leaders must head that off before it happens. — Bill Hybels

But, soft! methinks I do digress too much, — William Shakespeare

For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive. — Donna Tartt

The Duchess looked at Chloe with a look that said, You had the chance to tell him, but you chose to carry on the lie.
How do I know that the Duchess's look said this? Because there is an excellent book in my local library entitled One Thousand Doggy Expressions Explained by Professor L. Stone.
I digress. — David Walliams

But I Digress... — A.J. Linn

The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and improves them. But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let us now return. — Jerome K. Jerome

I say this because as an older man I am prone to ponder matters in the light of death in a way that you are not. I am like a traveler from Mars who looks down in astonishment at what passes here. And what I see is the same human frailty passed from generation to generation. What I see is again and again the same sad human frailty. We hate one another; we are the victims of irrational fears. And there is nothing in the stream of human history to suggest we are going to change this. But
I digress, confess that. I merely wish to point out that in the face of such a world you have only yourselves to rely on. You have only the decision you must make, each of you, alone. And will you contribute to the indifferent forces that ceaselessly conspire toward injustice? Or will you stand up against this endless tide and in the face of it be truly human? — David Guterson

When I was a child, I used to eat sugar Frosted Flakes with chocolate milk, but I digest, I mean digress. — Stephen Furst

Let me digress a moment to talk about beginnings. How much simpler life would be if we were wise enough to stop at the first blush of romance, the start of a business transaction or a casual friendship. If we knew enough to pause and think: this is as good as it gets. Everything will go downhill from this moment on. So once again our instincts are the opposite of what they should be, propelling us forward exactly when they should be holding us back. — Francine Prose

[Benjamin Peirce's] lectures were not easy to follow. They were never carefully prepared. The work with which he rapidly covered the blackboard was very illegible, marred with frequent erasures, and not infrequent mistakes (he worked too fast for accuracy). He was always ready to digress from the straight path and explore some sidetrack that had suddenly attracted his attention, but which was likely to have led nowhere when the college bell announced the close of the hour and we filed out, leaving him abstractedly staring at his work, still with chalk and eraser in his hands, entirely oblivious of his departing class. — William Elwood Byerly

Every man has an inner caveman. Unless he's a flaming queen, in which case he has an inner wild-eyed, jealous bitch - as in the case of an ex of mine. But I digress. — Tammara Webber

People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line. — Dean Kamen

I digress, but here's the rub: The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory. The living, thank heaven, retain the ability to surprise and to disappoint. Your Hazel is alive, Waters, and you mustn't impose your will upon another's decision, particularly a decision arrived at thoughtfully. She wishes to spare you pain, and you should let her. You may not find young Hazel's logic persuasive, but I have trod through this vale of tears longer than you, and from where I'm sitting, she's not a lunatic. — John Green

I'm sorry if I seem to digress, but that is precisely what I was thinking at the moment. It's the way my mind works. Things are not the same in real life as they are in, for instance, the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes. Brains, in reality, do not go clickety-clickety-clickety-click from A to B to C to D and so forth, rushing like a train along the rails, until at the end, with a happy "Toot-toot!" they arrive at their destination, Z, and the case is suddenly solved. Quite the contrary. In reality, analytical minds such as my own are forever shooting wildly off in all directions simultaneously. It's like joyously hitting jelly with a sledgehammer; like exploding galaxies; like a display of fireworks in which the pyrotechnic engineer has had a bit too much to drink and set off the whole conglobulation all at once, by accident. — Alan Bradley

Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any further together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction. — Henry Fielding

I wouldn't wish now to digress into the philosophy of the relationship between life and logic ,but we shall agree that it was a good thing we were not wholly logical.For if we had been ,we would have surrendered at the end of April or the beginning of May 1992.The entire logic of the world was against us at that time.And now we have these illogical people who say: we have no food,we have no bullets ,but we'll fight and win.what is one to do with them? They are good,courageous people. — Alija Izetbegovic

I willingly trust myself to chance. I let my thoughts wander, I digress, not only sitting at my work, but all day long, all night even. It often happens that a sentence suddenly runs through my head before I go to bed, or when I am unable to sleep, and I get up again and write it down. — Simone De Beauvoir

She was a sleuth and sleuths had to follow rules. 'Get to the point; don't allow the subject to digress' was one of them — Renita D'Silva