“A common misconception among youngsters attending school is that their teachers were child prodigies. Who else but a bookworm, prowling libraries and disdaining the normal youngster's propensity for play rather than study, would grow up to be a teacher anyway?”

“The disorders that psychology associates with the dissonance between what parents say to children and what children know to be reality - from deep insecurities to chronic anxiety to depression - are not to be found among the hunter-gatherers I have known. This is not to claim that they are people who know nothing of mental illness. Rather, it is to look at the absence of a particular kind of illness, one that in my own society is somewhere between common and the norm. The apparent sturdiness of the hunter-gatherer personality, the virtual universality of self-confidence and equanimity, the absence of anxiety disorders and most depressive illnesses - these may well be the benefits of using words to tell the truth.”

“We can only fix our own lives. We cannot play the role of gods in someone else's.”

“And if we judged everyone by who they were and not who they've learned to become, well then I guess none of us would have any friends. Including me.”

“There are two types of teachers in the world: there are those who play school and teachers that teach school”

“They say women can’t play guitar as well as men. I don’t play the guitar with my fucking vagina, so what difference does it make?”

“But trust me, that feeling is nothing compared to the one you get when you actually help someone who didn't think that anyone ever would.”