Prep School Quotes & Sayings

I walked onstage in a play at prep school, and with childish naivete, told myself, 'Wow, I'm an actor!' — Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

I mean I was very shy but I was also very extroverted because I was doing plays. I'd been doing plays since I was a little kid. But, I did feel like an outsider because I went to like a 'college-prep' kind of high school that had a really big football team and was known for its program so I was like this weird boy that did plays. — John C. Reilly

I took the whole college prep trajectory, and then in my senior year of high school, I decided that performing was something that I had always done as a kid, and I loved it ... I said, 'This makes people happy when I do this, I feel good, I get to pretend and explore other areas and learn so much'. — Tamara Tunie

I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13. — Richard Dawkins

Nudge: I look like prep school Barbie. (looks at Max) Actually, you look like prep school Barbie. I'm just Barbie's friend. — James Patterson

Could it be that Cania isn't the ultimate prep school, isn't the sure way into the Ivy League? As if to solidify my suspicion, a guy with emo eyeliner tells his ill-fated story. — Anonymous

When I came back from France they all wanted me to go to college. I couldn't. After what I'd been through I felt I couldn't go back to school. I learnt nothing at my prep school anyway. I felt I couldn't enter into a freshman's life. They wouldn't have liked me. I didn't want to act a part I didn't feel. And I didn't think the instructors would teach me the sort of things I wanted to know. — W. Somerset Maugham

I grew up playing field hockey and lacrosse - prep school sport - and I was terrible at them. — Julie Bowen

Sorry," I said, realizing I was taking my frustrations out on her. "I'm still getting over Soph," I said, referring to my old prep school friend.
Sophie Price was the most beautiful girl you'd ever met. Seriously. Take it from someone who's met Bar Refaeli in person. Soph was even more stunning. Especially since she'd had a personality makeover. I'd never regret anything as much as I would not making her fall in love with me.
"You can't make anyone fall, Spence. Either they do or they don't."
"I said that out loud?"
"Duh and it's been two years, Spencer. You seriously need to get over her. She's with that Ian guy anyway, right?"
"Right."
"That hot South African guy named Ian," she concluded.
"Thanks."
"That hot saffy named Ian who gives his life to mutilated Ugandan orphans and worships the ground Sophie walks on."
I stopped and glared at her. "That'll do, Bridge. — Fisher Amelie

Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati
those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues. — Edward Abbey

The boarding school memoir or novel is an enduring literary subgenre, from 1950s classics such as The Catcher in the Rye to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Doust's recognisably Australian contribution to the genre draws on his own experiences in a West Australian boarding school in this clever, polished, detail-rich debut novel. From the opening pages, the reader is wholly transported into the head of Jack Muir, a sensitive, sharp-eyed boy from small-town WA who is constantly measured (unfavourably) against his goldenboy brother. The distinctive, masterfully inhabited adolescent narrator recalls the narrator in darkly funny coming-of-age memoir Hoi Polloi (Craig Sherborne) - as does the juxtaposition of stark naivety and carefully mined knowingness.' - Bookseller+Publisher — Jon Doust

When I first entered the school, I was all set to tie my hair in a ponytail, get a fake tan, and write my homework in pink gel ink. I was prepared to hear girls bragging nonchalantly about the BMWs and diamond earrings they recieved for their birthday. I almost looked forward to hearing the flashlight-wielding nuns tell me to "leave room for the holy ghost" when I danced lewedly with messy-haired prep-school boys — Jennifer Allison

I went to prep school, Eton and Oxford. When people hear that, they think they know you, and you think: 'No, you don't.' — Harry Lloyd

Suppose a would-be writer can't begin? I really believe there are many excellent writers who have never written because they never could begin. This is especially the case of people of great sensitiveness, or of people of advanced education. Professors suffer most of all from this inhibition. Many of them carry their unwritten books to the grave. They overestimate the magnitude of the task, they overestimate the greatness of the final result. A child in a prep school will write the History of Greece and fetch it home finished after school. "He wrote a fine History of Greece the other day," says his fond father. Thirty years later the child, grown to be a professor, dreams of writing the History of Greece
the whole of it from the first Ionic invasion of the Aegean to the downfall of Alexandria. But he dreams. He never starts. He can't. It's too big. Anybody who has lived around a college knows the pathos of those unwritten books. — Stephen Leacock

I was at a school in England, a prep school, from the ages of 8 and 13. And every play they did was a musical. Parents love musicals. And I don't sing. It was driving me crazy. 'We're doing 'Macbeth.' 'Yes!' 'The musical!' And I was always in the chorus, because of course, in all the main parts, you had to be able to sing. — Charlie Cox

We pretend to be a middle class, democratic nation, but in reality we love our blue bloods ... We love the prep school manners, the aristocratic calm, the Skull and Bones mystery, the dappled lawns stretching before New England summer homes. How else can you explain the Bush vs. Kerry match-up that confronts us this year — David Brooks

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. — John Irving

I'd read an enormous amount but had spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have extensive social skills. Suddenly I was in this world where I was surrounded by these incredibly polished and wealthy kids who had gone to prep schools, and I felt daunted by them. I don't think people were aware of how full of anxiety I was ... For a long time I felt like I was living in a place where I shouldn't have been. — Dan Chaon

You know how some kids get excited about the first day of school and have an outfit all picked out and a new lunch box and stuff? Well, they're bleeping idiots.
Can we play hooky?" Iggy muttered as he scrambled eggs.
Somehow I suspect they're picky about that," I said, dropping more bread into the toaster. "I bet they'd call Anne."
I look like prep school Barbie," Nudge complained, as she entered the kitchen. She caught sight of me in my uniform and looked mollified. "Actually, you look like prep school Barbie. I'm just Barbie's friend."
I narrowed my eyes at her. — James Patterson

I grew up in Los Angeles. I still remember when I was a junior in high school studying for the SATs. I had my job - I was actually a production assistant on a film - but on weekends, I would finish my prep tests on the beach. — Cody Horn

When you are getting on in years it is nice to sit by the fire and drink a cup of tea and listen to the school bell sounding dinner, call-over, prep., and lights out. Chips always wound up the clock after that last bell; then he put the wire guard in front of the fire, turned out the gas, and carried a detective novel to bed. Rarely did he read more than a page of it before sleep came swiftly and peacefully, more like a mystic intensifying of perception than any changeful entrance into another world. For his days and nights were equally full of dreaming. — James Hilton

In crew, contempt is important. In Boston, Boston University and Northeastern crew are treated with contempt by the college up the river. Intramural crew is treated with contempt. Nonathletic coxswains (Chinese engineering majors, poets) are treated with contempt. A true coxswain is a diminutive jock, raging against the pint size that made him the butt of so many jokes at Prep school. He runs twenty stadiums a day, his girlfriend is six feet one, and he can scream orders even when he has the flu (which he catches at least three times a winter). — Lisa Birnbach

If I were to be cast as Cyrano or a Connecticut prep-school teacher or a gay boutique owner, it would only happen if some director I had worked with in the past said, 'Why don't we give Rispoli a shot at it?' — Michael Rispoli

When I went to prep school in New York City, I had to ride the subway and learned how to do homework on the train. I can work and read through anything. — Alan Furst

I was lucky enough to go to an all-boys prep school in upstate New York that had a film program, so we had access to 16mm Bolex cameras, Nagra sound recorders, Arriflex cameras. We even had an Oxberry animation stand! — Warren Spector

There's a problem when we're creating a job you can't do if you have kids," Dennis Van Roekel, former president of the National Education Association, told me. "There are a lot of us who spend too much time working. But ultimately, you need time for family, time for community, time for church." According to a union executive who has negotiated charter school contracts across the country, at many schools teachers are expected to eat lunch with their students, and have no prep period to plan lessons. At others, when a teacher calls in sick, the school will not hire a substitute, but will instead require other teachers to fill in during their prep periods. At one Chicago charter school, teachers complained that they had so little free time during the day that they could not visit the bathroom. — Dana Goldstein

When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison. — Angela Davis

Britain is blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous. — David Brooks

I had a brilliant drama teacher while I was at Roland Park: Ann Mainolfi. But the school was mostly rich in academics. It wasn't like I was prepping myself for a life in acting. There, you prepped yourself to have a stable future. The school's piece de resistance is college prep - it didn't teach you how to audition for a TV show. — Nicole Ari Parker

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time; to say 'high Anglo-Catholic' would be a real English understatement. — John Hurt

Suddenly a force greater than my common sense - which, I'll admit, has been pretty faulty lately, propels me - and I find myself creeping up the long staircase to the forbidden second floor.
I need to see Michael's room.
I need to find out if he is a secret slob, or if there's even more interesting evidence of whom he is up there. I'm not expecting to find anything big, like a literal skeleton in his closet. But I am going to find it, whatever it is. And I will know once and for all who he is.
I make it to the landing when I hear a burst of barking below me and I freeze.
Someone has let a dog in.
Which means that some member of the Endicott family is actually in the house.
Which means that one of Michael's parents is about to catch me snooping. — Stephanie Wardrop

The world according to Heidegger is like a prep school for Calvinists. — Max Scheler

I was in a university prep school in Canada, and the way that particular place worked was, you chose at a very young age what you were going to do with the rest of your life. Mine was law. — Leslie Hope

You hear it most when politicians who live in places like Hyannis Port and Beacon Hill and Wellesley make decisions that affect people who live in Dorchester and Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and then step back and say there isn't a war going on. There is a war going on. It's happening in playgrounds, not health clubs. It's fought on cement, not lawns. It's fought with pipes and bottles, and lately, automatic weapons. And as long as it doesn't push through the heavy oak doors where they fight with prep school educations and filibusters and two-martini lunches, it will never actually exist. — Dennis Lehane

Looking, acting, and ultimately being Prep is not restricted to an elite minority lucky enough to attend prestigious private schools, just because an ancestor or two happened to arrive here on the Mayflower. You don't even have to be a registered Republican. — Lisa Birnbach

I went to prep school for one year in Arizona. It was called Orme. — Bill Kreutzmann

Well, the thing about my high school, which I loved, is that we had uniforms. But whenever we had a free dress day, it was prep-ville, with sweater vests and polo shirts and khakis and Dockers. — Vanessa Minnillo

Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it. — Stephen Sondheim

There's emptiness in him that can never be filled, emptiness that dresses up well at prep school, where a lack of willpower is called creativity. — Caroline Kepnes

I had not expected the gentle, tentative surge of gratitude I began to feel...for St. Paul's School, the spring, and the early morning. I needed the morning light and the warbling birds. I needed to find a way to live in this place for a moment and get the good of it. I had tried to hold myself apart, and the aloneness proved more terrible than what I had tried to escape. — Lorene Cary

Natalie, who was the author of a series of wildly successful Hunger Games meets Gossip Girl YA books about a clique of girls at a postapocalyptic prep school who have to simultaneously fight for popularity and for the survival of the planet - hadn — Doree Shafrir

My mullet was an insecurity shield. My mullet was an ethnic hatchet. My mullet was an arrow on fire.
My mullet said to the literary world, Hello, you privileged prep-school assholes, I'm here to steal your thunder, lightning, and book sales. — Sherman Alexie

Relief, fear, and humiliation. Her parents paid for a pricey prep school education in D.C. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown with a degree in political science. She breezed through law school and finished with honors. A dozen megafirms offered her jobs after a federal court clerkship. The first twenty-nine years of her life had seen overwhelming success and little failure. To be discharged in such a manner was crushing. To be escorted out of the building was degrading. This was not just a minor bump in a long, rewarding career. — John Grisham

To try to be at once a Lithuanian yeshiva and a New England prep school: that was the unspoken motto of the Maimonides School of Brookline, Mass., where I studied for 12 years. — Noah Feldman

A white girl disappears from a white prep school in a white suburb. Nobody knows what happened to her. The overall whiteness of the world is threatened. This must be resolved by whatever means possible. — Heidi Julavits

The first two pictures I did, I played a young student in prep school. When I did Lifeguard, everyone was saying, You're so Southern California. It was a surprise to me. — Parker Stevenson

I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas; we'd swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend. — Angie Thomas

I went to Catholic high school, so my being in this [the craft] is not going to make my grandmother very happy. It's funny, because I was the only one who is Catholic in it. You have this thing in mass where you have to genuflect before you go into the pew, so I said you have to do this [for a scene] and they said why, and I said because you have to; I don't know why, it's a rule. Or like instinct. It's funny they set in a Catholic school. I went to St. Ignatius College Prep - "Where Modesty is our Policy." — Robin Tunney

I have not seen that standardised tests make the profession less attractive, though some principals respond to them in a way that drives the best teachers out of their schools (by over-emphasising test prep in the school curriculum for example). On the other hand, great teachers want benchmarks to measure progress and tests can help with that. — Wendy Kopp

Started by missionaries in 1841, Punahou Academy had grown into a prestigious prep school, an incubator for island elites ... It hadn't been easy to get me in, my grandparents told her (my mother); there was a long waiting list, and I was considered only because of the intervention of Gramps' boss, who was an alumnus (my first experience with affirmative action, it seems, had little to do with race). — Barack Obama

Bellingham Academy: everything you always wanted in a prep school and less. — Amber Dermont

Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game. — V.S. Pritchett

I went to Our Lady of Mercy, parochial school and I started Fordham Prep, but that only lasted about a year and then I - to me, it was like going to some kind of concentration camp. I was not very happy. And I only went there because that's where my brother went, really. — Robert Barry

I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh. — Alain De Botton

Was a hardcore homeschooler, K-12, baby. I was homeschooled before it was cool to be homeschooled. And you know what? I hardly remember anything from high school. I did all the Advanced Placement classes and SAT prep classes. I was a good student in high school, but I don't remember much. I also hardly remember anything from college, and I graduated at the top of my class. But I do remember my parents' devotion to the Lord. — Stephen Altrogge

According to a study by Achieve Incorporated, Texas is the first state to make a college-prep curriculum the standard coursework in high school, starting with this year's ninth grade class. — Rick Perry