One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me Superman did not exist. I was like what do you mean he's not real. And she thought I was crying because it’s like Santa Claus is not real and I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us.

When the safety of America is threatened, we will spend any amount of money. The real safety of our nation is preparing this next generation so that they can take our place [in] thinking and technology and democracy.

Education is the only billion dollar industry that tolerates abject failure.

When kids know that you refuse to let them fail ... they don't give up as easy. So sometimes they don't have it inside, [but] they're like,'You know, I don't want to do this, but I know my mother's going to be mad.'That matters to kids, and it helps get them through.

I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before.

When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.

Monsters work seven days a week and don't take vacations.