We're in English class, which for most of us is an excruciating exercise in staying awake through the great classics of literature. These works - groundbreaking, incendiary, timeless - have been pureed by the curriculum monsters into a digestible pabulum of themes and factoids we can spew back on a test. Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary.

Don't you? if you keep them from the magic, they will never know what their lives could be.' They will remain protected,' Asha insists. No, 'I say. 'Only untested.

We're like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can't look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead.

Dude, this is a stoner conversation and we're not even high

Things aren't good or bad in and of themselves. It's what we do with them that makes them so.

They swoon over Tom, who preens for them, bowing, which sets them to blushing and giggling. God help us all.

There are times when one friend requires the blind faith of another.