“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”

“Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all, love them.”

“Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.”

“... it isn’t the kids who have two parents and a stable home who are the luckiest ones. It’s the kids who know the taste of shit because they’ve been eatin’ it all their lives and then someone finds them and offers them a taste of somethin’ sweeter and they learn that life can be good. They learn to trust. They learn that if you care about someone you put your ass on the line to keep them safe. They learn that love doesn’t come with conditions.”

“Kids learn not so much from what they're taught as from what they do.”

“Kid says to me, "You play baseball? What position? Left out?" and gets a big laugh from the rest of the class. Kid is only one person out of 6.792 billion humans on this planet. This planet is only one-eighth of the solar system, whose sun is one of two billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Put it that way, the comment loses it's importance.”