Esmé Raji Codell · 206 pages
Rating: (5.4K votes)
“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning. The only other job with so much sharing is parenting. That's probably why the two are so often confused.”
“Sometimes a little song is sweet to hear, even if the orchestra is more accomplished”
“Why do these dumb fucks keep guns around the house? They make the world as ruinous as they imagine it is.”
“The goal is not necessarily to succeed but to keep trying, to be the kind of person who has ideas and see them through. We’ll”
“Today so many creative and devoted teachers not only have to struggle against unimaginative administrations, fearful parents, and wearied colleagues, they have also to battle entire legislative bodies that have never taught a child yet dare to equate educational success or failure with the ability of fourth graders to choose one out of four given answers to mind-numbing questions that have nothing to do with the joy of literature or the elegance of math.”
“We do not argue about what happened in the past but discuss what we desire for the future.”
“Nobody really knows which is happening when the teacher closes the door. At worst, mediocrity. At best, miracles.”
“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning.”
“I suppose an active imagination can be a form of madness. Or it can be the thing that keeps you from going mad.”
“Mr. Turner gets mad when I say, “I don’t work for you, I work for the children.” But it’s true. Isn’t it? I’ll find out when I get fired, I guess.”
“For the rest of the day I was glad I listened instead of yelled, but I still burned with shame at the thought of what I almost said and at all the occasions I have spoken harshly.”
“The only way to tell if someone is a bodiless witch is by the deep wrinkle lines around her neck. At night when these witches go to sleep their heads separate from their bodies. Dragging their intestines along, they fly around to places where there’s blood and death. The heads fly so fast that no one has ever seen the faces, only their shiny red eyes and sometimes the shadow of their heads and entrails. Once she finds a dead body, the bodiless witch nestles against the corpse all night.”
“To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything.
But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories.
And humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could change the stories.”
“how can I write about this when I am afraid of not having time to finish and of stirring up all these thoughts in vain?”
“The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack. The round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets
And citizens to their dens. The death of Anthony
Is not a single doom, in the name lay
A moiety of the world.”
“Oh, Neil, unpredictable as he is unreal.”
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