I am very interested in people trying to write because I…

I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense.…

— Sarah Vowell

Academia is a rarified culture, especially an Ivy League academic background.

— Paul Giamatti

I did not come from an academic background. My father was a smart man, but he had a fifth-grade education. He and all his…

— Leonard Susskind

I come from an academic background. I wasn't raised to be into promoting myself.

— Michael Heizer

I come out of an academic background, and I'm aware that what I'm doing is simultaneously research and fiction. I want to meet both…

— Emma Donoghue

I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic…

— Bernice Johnson Reagon

My mom and dad put my brother and sister through university and they were very keen for us to have an academic background just…

— Rob James-Collier

Once I engage in something, I really engage in it, and I love the process of reading and researching because I come from an…

— Michael Hirst

Merit should count more than academic background.

— Lee Myung-bak

I was writing from a very, very early age. My father used to write. He died early, and my mother was a schoolteacher, so…

— Derek Walcott

I come from an academic background, and I have a genuine interest in social change.

— Amanda Seales

I didn't go to university. I don't have an academic background.

— Sean Mathias

I guess I'm interested in people who are very sophisticated in intellectual ways, while being completely off the mark in emotional ones, with huge…

— Noah Baumbach

I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people.

— Joan Didion

What I'm interested in is to get people saved and to see the power of God spread.

— Reinhard Bonnke