“The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.”

“Good Christ, a Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!”

“I'm too old to be ignorant as I am." --Twelve-year-old Gabriella to the general, who does not want her to know about Emmett Till and the world's brutality.”

“Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, she still showed traces of her former beauty and seemed much younger than her years. This is generally true of women who remain serene in spirit, fresh in their impressions, and spontaneously warmhearted right to the edge of old age. One might add that in this way, and only in this way, they retain their beauty in old age too.”

“What matters most in a child's development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence.”

“Those who had the remaining jobs would have to buy the cheapest stuff possible with their drastically reduced wages, and in order for the manufacturers to keep that stuff cheap, it would have to be made by fifteen-year-olds in China.”