## Metadata - Author: [[Emily Temple]] - Full Title: 15 Famous Writers on the Perils of a Formal Education - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[Favorites]] [[philosophy]] [[psychology]] [[Reading]] [[time management]] [[Misc./Funny/Writing]] - URL: https://lithub.com/15-famous-writers-on-the-perils-of-a-formal-education/ ## Highlights - If that’s you, you’re in good company: lots of famous writers hated school, too. - “Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”  –Ray Bradbuy, to The New York Times. - You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.”  –Ray Bradbury, in an interview with Sam Weller