Alone in the Classroom

And when is it ever convincing, the belief others have in your abilities? You know perfectly well they can't see the mess inside you.

A child lies like a grey pebble on the shore until a certain teacher picks him up and dips him in water, and suddenly you see all the colours and patterns in the dull stone, and it’s marvelous for the stone and marvelous for the teacher.

The older you get, the closer your loves are to the surface. She was breathing rarefied air, the ether you come upon at high altitudes. I understood finally how long-held grievances and petty smallnesses might get burned off, and pure creativity and humour remain.

She would always be careful around people like Parley Burns, tricky people who are thin skinned and punitive and intelligent and surprisingly honest.

How attraction works, making one's body almost painfully alive and one's thoughts concentrated, also painfully. And the truth of these powerful attractions - they have their own morality and nothing else matters.