I never got any training in how to write novels as an English major at Oberlin, but I got some great training for writing novels from anthropology and from Margaret Mead.
Alan Furst
I ended up doing four or five plays in college and being an English major with my thesis in language acquisition, which I was planning to study in graduate school.
Carrie Coon
When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a writer and an artist when I grew up. So in college, I was an English major, and then I became a fine artist. But when I arrived in San Francisco in 1995, I figured I could leverage my artistic skills by becoming a Web designer and programmer.
Caterina Fake
I had higher math SATs than in English - yet I became an English major in college.
Christie Hefner
I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.
Cynthia Nixon
I do tend to be an analyzer. I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.
There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
David Brin
I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University of North Carolina for three years.
Elizabeth Edwards
I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer.
Fred Savage
I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.
Garrison Keillor
I did try to go to college and try to be an English major.
Hamish Linklater
I was an English major at UCLA when I was 18, and then I left after a year to start acting. I was educating myself during that time.
James Franco
English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
Jane Smiley
I was an English major.
Jenna Bush
I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.
Jennifer Weiner
Finding a technical cofounder would have been difficult for me. I was an English major and didn't know any computer programmers.
Jessica Livingston
I was an English major in college who concentrated in African-American literature and culture. So I read quite a few slave narratives and stories of escape, and I grew up in Ohio, which was a common stop on the Underground Railroad.
John Legend
I was an English major in college!
Maggie Siff
I was an English major, and I always wrote poems.
Mat Kearney
When I barely got into college, the one thing I could do was write, so I became an English major.
I was an English major in college, so I really liked spoken word and poetry; it was what I did before I wrote music.
I was an English major at Brown. I never enjoyed history classes.
As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.
I consider myself a writer who happens to write about history, rather than a historian. I was an English major in college. What I've learned about history is in the field, so to speak. Going into the archives and working with it directly.
In the beginning of college I wanted to be an English major, but then I became interested in international relations.
I read good. I was an English major.
I used to write a lot of songs. I was an English major in college. I was a deluded poet for a year. Totally deluded.
I was an English major at Yale, but I did do undergraduate theater there. And I went to the graduate school for acting.
I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking.
The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.
I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.
