Columbine

by Dave Cullen

You can’t really teach a kid anything: you can only show him the way and motivate him to learn it himself.

What good were special talents when there was no one to share them with?

but anger and young men were practically synonymous.

Grief is so peculiar. It strikes unpredictably and inconsistently: withstand an onslaught, then succumb to a trifle.

Death rituals, I’ve misjudged you. Open caskets, funerals, tombstones—I never liked any of that. But I’d never tried to mourn without them.

We should not be identifying teen depression just because of school shooters. We should do it to slash school dropout rates, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol addiction, car accidents, and general misery. But if we are primed to act, this is the answer. Teen depression: the great unlearned lesson of Columbine.

Disagreement over how to respond is reasonable. Pretending we’re not part of it is a fantasy. And deplorable.