digress

“The Madman’s Guide” has no chapter headings but many signposts such as “to digress further” and “at last to return to.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026

If David Nihill was a philosopher, his credo might be “I digress, therefore I am.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2026

I digress, though: This is a column about what is popular, not what is right and wrong!

From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2025

But I digress — this is supposed to be a positive column.

From Seattle Times ● May 3, 2023

And Small Islanders eager to say their ancestry is “mixed”? But we must not digress.

From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Its narrative offers few character sketches, jumps around in time and digresses into subjects that distract more than they enlighten.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026

He digresses to tell me the story, however, and it’s literally longer than this entire article’s word count.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2026

To that end, the show, like “A Chorus Line,” digresses into the contestants’ personal lives.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 20, 2023

Where Sterne’s “Tristram” digresses to prevent plot from happening, “CoDex 1962” sows plot upon plot, in the tradition of epics and sagas.

From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2018

He digresses here, and does not return to the subject till the 31st stanza, "What did I say?—that a small bird sings".

From An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry by Hiram Corson

And during a meeting in early January with oil and gas executives that was supposed to be about rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry, Trump apparently digressed yet again into talking about the ballroom.

From Slate ● Apr. 30, 2026

The audience of 1,600-plus, all primed to cheer the speakers’ adversarial views, found less and less to react to as the panel digressed.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2023

He protested, quibbled, digressed or simply could not recall.

From New York Times ● Nov. 10, 2021

"I am not a Bravo executive, so I don’t think I can speak to this on," she digressed.

From Fox News ● Oct. 14, 2021

But let us return to the point we digressed from.

From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli

Elliptical, digressing, self-interrupting, parenthesizing, Herzen wrote as he spoke, in a torrent of ideas, reminiscences, and literary and historical allusions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

But then Will spoils the effect by digressing into a jarring non sequitur:

From Salon ● Dec. 20, 2025

“Look at that beautiful lake,” he said, digressing.

From New York Times ● Jun. 19, 2024

But when I read it, I realized all the things I thought were my flaws — the digressing, the self-contradiction — in Bernhard that was the writing.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 27, 2022

But I am digressing from the subject of my sea bath, of which Miss Flora was the immediate occasion.

From Little Wolf A Tale of the Western Frontier by M. A. Cornelius