Spalding Gray Quotes

I was at this fancy school, and I felt out of place, so I rebelled.

Having gone to a public school, I thought I knew about posh people. But I didn't know anything until I went to Oxford.

I was very much a product of the public-school system. There was only one other kid in my class who had parents not involved in the stock market or law.

I wanted to look at the upper-middle-class scene since the war, and in particular my generation's part in it. We had spent our early years as privileged members of a privileged class. How were we faring in the Age of the Common Man? How ought we to be faring?

The Oxford manner is, alas, indefinable; I was going to say indefensible.

The nearest we have to a Henry James or an Edith Wharton of the East Coast's Wasp upper classes.

I'm still the little southern girl from the wrong side of the tracks who really didn't feel like she belonged.

At Yves Saint Laurent, I felt like the son-in-law - like I was part of the family, but not quite. When I was fired, I felt like the widow.

Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

I'm not posh, not in the slightest. My parents spent some money on my education, but I wasn't born to the purple.

I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash.

I was born in Paris in 1950. I had a strict upper-class Catholic education but I never really fitted in the system and revolted against it quite early.

I was privileged because my father was a policeman, and we lived in town. Many people in Malawi are from typical villages. My grandmother insisted I should be in both worlds, and so I needed to be acquainted with village life.

I've had to spend an awful lot of my life trying to pretend I'm not posh. Although once I open my mouth, I rather let things out the bag.

Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility.

They wouldn’t be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England.

My first series, the 'Inheritance' trilogy, in the first book, you were dealing with a woman of color from an impoverished culture, being brought up among wealthy, privileged white people and having to cope and perform in ways that she has not been raised to do, and that was obviously drawn from some personal experiences.

I was such a Jewish princess. My whole life was leading up to marrying a rich man and living on 48th Street.

I have never felt out of place in my entire life. But I did at Yale.

People assume that I'm an aristocrat, but I don't really feel part of any class.

I always felt like I was kind of an outsider because I didn't have the right things. I didn't have a Cadillac. I didn't have, you know, plastic on my furniture. That was the right way to be if you were Italian.

I went to a very posh school, I had a very privileged upbringing with parents who were incredibly loving and brilliant. I've never tried to hide that; I'm not going to change my accent or talk in a different way.

The Romanoffs are like the other side of 'The Great Gatsby.' 'Gatsby' is about the people who don't have the history but who want it. And 'The Romanoffs' is about the people who have it and don't know what to do with it.

My mother had a cotillion, but she wanted to be bohemian.

My parents - they tried to become American, they tried to become British, they tried to become Scandinavian - nobody wanted them, anywhere.