“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.”

And that’s it; that’s why I want to teach; that’s the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.

Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.

Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.

Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.

One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.

I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

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

A good 80 percent of the vault is still physical and another percentage of it, 20, 25 percent is mental.

I’ve been building a fiction in part around the Marfa poem since my brief residency there, which has kept it from receding into the past.

I always lived in old buildings, and I thought about who lived here before. You’d have to be oblivious not to.

Become better at firing than hiring – it’s crucial for building a business.

One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.

No one can claim to be called Christian who gives money for the building of warships and arsenals.

Building trust is a process. Trust results from consistent and predictable interaction over time.

The only thing God is building in this world is his church.