“Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it. Polly B. Berends”

“If your children see that you are seeking, they will seek—the finding part is up to God.”

“The child does not begin to fall until she becomes seriously interested in walking, until she actually begins learning. Falling is thus more an indication of learning than a sign of failure.”

“The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don't, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper.”

“Sometimes it is good to have things happen to you outside of your control. There are parts of yourself you would never discover otherwise.”

“All my life I had wanted to travel but what I discovered that year was that the things that you find out become the places that you go and sometimes you find them out by being jettisoned off alone and other times it is the people who choose to stand by your side who give you the clues. But the important things that happen to you will happen to you even in the smallest places...”

“So how did you get this job, anyway?' I asked.'My science teacher.''Why'd he pick you?''For my brains and good looks, obviously.''Yeah, right. My social studies teacher picked me, but I can't really figure out why."'For your brains and good looks, obviously.''Um, thanks.' Had Aaron just complimented me? Wow.”