“Don’t listen to what people tell you because they’ll try to bring you down. And don’t listen to yourself, either, because yourself will try to bring you down even more so than anyone else. As long as you just put all your energy into one thing, it can happen.”

“I hope to write someday and that’s even more terrifying than performing. You don’t just entertain the audience, you give them little bits of your soul.”

“But one of the big lessons I have learned from my journey is you can’t please everyone, so don’t try.”

“Roses are red,Violets are blue,No amount of money,Can stop me from loving you,Try as they may,Try as they might,I’m not letting go,Without a fight,Some say it’s wicked,Some say it’s sinful, Some it’s wrong,And just wrong,I don’t know much,But when push comes to shove,I definitely don’t believe,There’s such thing wrong as love.”

“So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” “Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen to their parents, or people don’t leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There’s only one thing that’s universal.” “What’s that?” “The truth.”

“Even in the worst of situations-even when it seems no one in the world appreciates you-as long as you have hope, everthing can get better”

“What grinds me the most is that we’re sending kids out into the world who don’t know how to balance a checkbook, don’t know how to apply for a loan, don’t even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world?”