“To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months’ summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect.”

My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.

You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.

I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.

The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?

I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen

I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.

Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.

Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.

“Language Arts Dept.” is the English office; “literature based on child’s reading level and experiential background” means that’s all they’ve got in the Book Room; “non-academic-minded” is a delinquent; and “It has come to my attention” means you’re in trouble.

The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.

When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.

If a teacher wants to know something why doesn’t she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she’s the teacher!

Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.

Best marks go to cheaters and memorizers. Marks depend on memorizing and not on real knowledge. When you cram into your head for a test you may get a high mark but forget it the next day. That’s not an education.

My first job entailed spending a summer working in a cornfield in nebraska.

Start going to bed earlier! It is a tough adjustment when you have had a summer of staying up late and waking up late.

The smell of oak reminds me of summers spent sleeping under canvas, crackling fires and roasted coffee, the soft sound of guitar and voices in unison.

Oh my love, it’s you that I dream of Oh my love, since that day Somewhere in my heart I’m always Dancing with you in the summer rain

We all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summer. The poor get it in the winter.

I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.

Forgiveness is not simply the absolving of an enemy, or one who has done us wrong. Forgiveness must encompass all those things which disturb the tranquility of our soul.

Departed suns their trails of splendor drew Across departed summers: whispers came From voices, long ago resolved again Into the primeval Silence, and we twain, Ghosts of our present selves, yet still the same, As in a spectral mirror wandered there.