I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
BEL KAUFMANI 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.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
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Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.
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To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
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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.
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I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don’t have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don’t want to do it. What a liberating word.
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One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
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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.
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“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.
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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.
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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.
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Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
BEL KAUFMAN