“There's a formality in academia that can't be ignored, even if a man is busy with other things, like trying not to die.”

“I mean, I ignore plenty of stuff, like school spirit days and the dirty looks I get from the Detentionheads while I try to slink through the halls unnoticed. But there's something about telling other people what to ignore that just doesn't work for me. Especially things we shouldn't be ignoring.Hear that girl in your class is being abused by her stepfather and had to go to the clinic? Hear she's bringing her mother's pills to school and selling them to pay for it? Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Mind your own business. Don't make waves. Fly under the radar. It's just one of those things, Vera. I'm sorry, but I don't get it. If we're supposed to ignore everything that's wrong in our lives, then I can't see how we'll ever make things right.”

“Fortune or misfortune, a man can but try; there's not to be done without trying - accept laying down and dying.”

“If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.”

“Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match.”

“No. Never. I have to try my best or I'll become worse and worse. Even if I can't make up with them. Even if they all ignore me. I still have to try my best.”