“The difference between a beginning teacher and an experienced one is that the beginning teacher asks, "How am I doing?" and the experienced teacher asks, How are the children doing?”

“...'Loving children is what teachers do for extra credit. It's not the main assignment.' 'Seems to me that the extra credit is more important than the main assignment,' observed Cordelia.”

“It's not our job to be liked(teachers)", I reminded her. "Its our job to help them be smart(students)". Secretly, I thought, who gives a rat's ass if they like us? Sometimes I can hardly stand them!”

“Why do these dumb fucks keep guns around the house? They make the world as ruinous as they imagine it is.”

“I tend not to share things unnecessarily with those I despise.”

“Something's going on in Cordell's room, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.”

“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning. The only other job with so much sharing is parenting. That's probably why the two are so often confused.”