“We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?”

“Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.”

“The king greeted the document (the Collectanea) not so much as a drowning man greets a straw but as he might a rescue party from outer space.”

“Brick: "You'd look good like that."Carly: "Like what?"Brick: "In white."Carly: "What do you mean? White?"Brick: "Yeah, in a long white dress, walking down an aisle, toward me."Carly: "Is that a proposal?"Brick: "What would you say if it was, honey?"Carly: "That's for me to know and for you to find out.”

“In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.”

“Now the line is: Forget the classics, concentrate on an education for the 21st century! Which apparently means knowing how to operate electronic devices and figure out a spreadsheet. That's not education, it's vocational training. What once were means seem to have become ends in education. And our more with-it "educators" shift with every passing wind, clutching at the latest gimmick the way drowning men do at straws.”