English Teacher Quotes
I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.
John Updike
Stupid English."English isn't stupid," I say."Well, my English teacher is." He makes a face. "Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me."Why not?"He says lunch isn't a subject."I glance at him. "It isn't."Well," Jacob says, "it's not a predicate, either. Shouldn't he know that?
Jodi Picoult
I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.
Carol Ann Duffy
The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.
Flannery O'Connor
It's the first line in your book. I always thought there was a lot of truth in that. Or maybe that's what my English teacher said. I can't really remember. I read it last semester."- Your parents must be so proud you can read."- They are. They bought me a pony and everything when I did a book report on Cat in the Hat.
Nicholas Sparks
Then he asked me to tell him some stories about India, about America, about Italy, about my family. That's when I realized that I am not Ketut Liyer's English teacher, nor am I exactly his theological student, but I am the merest and simplest of pleasures for this old medicine man- I am his company. I'm somebody he can talk to because he enjoys hearing about the world and he hasn't had much of a chance to see it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell, who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.
Melvin Burgess