“If you respected someone, then you had to ask something of them.”

“Earl rarely used the word, but his whole system of teaching and his whole way of living was built around the concept of honor. You honored God by using your time wisely, and you honored your fellow man by treating him with respect. You honored your teacher by calling him "sir," and he honored his students by challenging them to face pain and become stronger. Earl had come to associate charity with pain, and he believed that love did its deepest work when applied to a wound.”

“If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.”

“When I was in third grade--the age of many of the boys here--my parents had debated whether or not to buy me a pair of [special soccer shoes]...Here in Bolivia most of the kids played in bare feet, and they had as much fun as we ever had. Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something that we do only in comparison to others. I took off my shoes.”

“If we want to change something, we must begin with understanding. But if we want to love something, we must begin with acceptance.”

“There were a number of definitions of courage, but now I was seeing it in its simplest form: you do what has to be done day after day, and you never quit.”

“I had been given the greatest gift an education could provide: I had a better idea of what it meant to live a good life”