When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.

Because I grew up with this naive expectation of people doing right, I get shocked by every little violation.

Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot.

The only thing that everyone needs to look out for is keeping the students reading through high school and thereafter.

High school teachers who want to get reluctant readers turned around need to give the students some say in the reading list. Make it collaborative: The students will feel ownership, and everyone will dig in.

I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.

We lose weeks like buttons, like pencils.