Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?

Bleeding heart, he’d called her. Well. He should know. He’d been the first to rip it to pieces.

There are so many ways to betray someone. You can whisper behind his back. You can deceive him on purpose. You can deliver him into the hands of his enemy, when he trusts you. You can break a promise. The question is, if you do any of those things, are you also betraying yourself?

If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.

The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn't had time to do.

Maybe if God gives you a handicap, he makes sure you've got a few extra doses of humor to take the edge off.