William Deresiewicz

Life, if you live it right, keeps surprising you, and the thing that keeps surprising you the most…is yourself

— William Deresiewicz

“[Jane] Austen was not a novelist for nothing: she knew that our stories are what make us human, and that listening to…

— William Deresiewicz

“No real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude.”

— William Deresiewicz

If you're oblivious to other people, chances are pretty good that you're going to hurt them.

— William Deresiewicz

Don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security,…

— William Deresiewicz

“there’s a bigger social reward for being able to talk about books than for actually reading them.”

— William Deresiewicz

We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.

— William Deresiewicz

“...Novels--which, after all, are training grounds for responding to the world, imaginative sanctuaries in which to hone and test our ethical judgments…

— William Deresiewicz

People’s stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing…

— William Deresiewicz

“Life is more than a job; jobs are more than a paycheck; and a country is more than its wealth. Education is…

— William Deresiewicz

“By the time they finish high school—after years of learning how to please their teachers and coaches, not to mention schmoozing with…

— William Deresiewicz

“Getting A’s no longer means that everything’s okay, assuming that it ever did. “We have students, who, no matter what else is…

— William Deresiewicz

“Both kinds of parenting, finally, are forms of overidentification. The helicopter parent turns the child into an instrument of her will. The…

— William Deresiewicz

“A friend who teaches at a top university once asked her class to memorize thirty lines of the eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope.…

— William Deresiewicz

“We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us…

— William Deresiewicz

“A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” The desire to eliminate uncertainty eliminates life.”

— William Deresiewicz

“I also spoke about the kid who can’t be bothered to get A’s in every class in high school because they’re actually…

— William Deresiewicz

“If you grow up with less, you are much better able to deal with having less. That is itself a kind of…

— William Deresiewicz

“But there is something that’s a great deal more important than parental approval: learning to do without it. That’s what it means…

— William Deresiewicz

Hence the vogue for double majors. It isn’t enough anymore to take a bunch of electives in addition to your primary focus,…

— William Deresiewicz

“Every A is a fix that temporarily quells the anxiety of failure, the terror of falling short.”

— William Deresiewicz

“It's hard to build your soul when everyone around you is trying to sell theirs”

— William Deresiewicz

Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurshi p comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the…

— William Deresiewicz

But it is not the job of truth to make us feel good. It is the job of truth to be true,…

— William Deresiewicz

“The system manufactures students who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity…

— William Deresiewicz