Reaching out to any fellow ghetto kids is an act he puts in the same category as doing drugs: the initial rush of warmth and euphoria puts you on a path to ruin.

It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community?

If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again

Once they arrive, affirmative action kids are generally left to sink or swim academically. Brown (University) offers plenty of counseling and tutoring to struggling students, but, as any academic Dean will tell you, it's up to the students to seek it out, something that a drowning minority student will seek to avoid at all costs, fearing it will trumpet a second-class status.

Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.

You try to hold on to some notions you might have had before, that this will somehow work out, this is a spell that will lift or be broken.