Declan

“I want to go on being a student," I told him. "I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader," I said.

"DON'T SOUND SO ASHAMED," he said. "READING IS A GIFT."

"I learned it from you," I told him.

"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT- IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT. IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Because school has always been a matter of getting it right, of scoping out what “rightness” means to the teacher and then providing this.”
― Kathryn Kramer, Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books

“this fundamental effort to get your bearings, this paradox pressed upon teenagers of distinguishing yourself from everyone in the world while taking care not to be different from anyone—”
― Kathryn Kramer, Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books

“What does he want you to do? What does she? And how can this be accomplished with the least effort possible so that time will be left for the real, important things? Here we are, figuring out how to survive in a hive of hierarchies, and they want us to memorize dates and decline agricola.”
― Kathryn Kramer, Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books