I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments.

You can't find me 20 children in Chicago, I don't care which section you go in - you can be on Michigan Avenue or here - and they won't be able to tell you that y is a vowel when it's the final syllable in a word, as in Nancy and icy. And no one bothers to teach the rules anymore - "i before e except after c."

Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.

Excellence is not an act, but a habit.

Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.

I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.

I think what we've done is given children a lot of things that they didn't ask for instead of what they do want.