As the blackness of the night recedes so does the nadir of yesterday. The child I am forgets so quickly.

No other job in the world could possibly dispossess one so completely as this job of teaching. You could stand all day in a laundry, for instance, still in possession of your mind. But this teaching utterly obliterates you. It cuts right into your being: essentially, it takes over your spirit. It drags it out from where it would hide.

I flung my tongue round like a cat-o'-nine-tails so that my pleasant peaceful infant room became little less than a German concentration camp as I took out on the children what life should have got.

Off fall the wife, the mother, the lover, the teacher, and the violent artist takes over. I am I alone. I belong to no one but myself. I mate with no one but the spirit. I own no land, have no kin, no friend or enemy. I have no road but this one.

I am inclined to think that eating is a private thing and should be done alone, like other bodily functions.

It's just as possible to live to the full in a narrow corner as it is in bigness.

I see the mind of the five-year-old as a volcano with two vents: destructiveness and creativeness.