“I shuffle along, letting the current pull me, and i have the sense that I am like a rat caught in a maze of tunnels, moving endlessly toward some promise of…of what? Light? Life? Cheese?”

“Life is the only thing that can prepare you for life, and even then, you’re unprepared for it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don’t think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend.”“How would you introduce her?” I asked.“I’m just going to say her name,” he said.”

“After you hear and listen. First must come desire. Second must come willingness.Third should come understanding.Fourth should come progression and with progression will come more understanding.”

“Tie me up, please…” Chantal said. They looked above at some vines and roots hanging down from the grassy area above the depression in the canal they were standing in. She was in his hands—he had to comply.A little bit of kink was one of the most delicious of erotic pleasures. Catholic school girls were often the horniest—Brett could hardly contain his elation.”

“Progress Is A Process… – (G Swiss)”

“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.”

“If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences.”

“Did you get notes for me?””No”, Ronan replied,”I thought you were dead in a ditch.”

“People don’t want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you’re a teacher you’re in a constant battle with mildly deluded adults who think the world will get better if you imagine it is better. You want to teach about sex? Fine, but only when they’re old enough to do it. You want to talk politics? Sure, but nothing modern. Religion? So long as you don’t actually think about it. Otherwise some furious mob will come to your house and burn you for a witch.”

“Everything I need to know… I learned in kindergarten.”

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”

“It is not that the dumb cannot be taught, It is that the teachers failed to teach”