I need eight hours to get maybe 20 minutes of work done. I had one of those yesterday: seven hours of self-loathing.

Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.

And what we were trying to offer every day was one-on-one attention. The goal was to have a one-to-one ratio with every one of these students.

I hung up the phone, jubilant, and threw myself into a wall, then pretended to be getting electrocuted. I do this when I'm very happy.

The key thing is, even if you only have a couple of hours a month, those two hours shoulder-to-shoulder, next to one student, concentrated attention, shining this beam of light on their work, on their thoughts and their self-expression, is going to be absolutely transformative, because so many of the students have not had that ever before.

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

The air is like being wanted, we say, and they nod approvingly. The air is like getting older, they say, and they touch our arms gently.