The Academy Quotes

“It’s better to be yourself and have no friends than to be like your friends and have no self.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Boys are judged for what they do. Girls are judged for how they look doing it.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“I figure if I present my authentic self, my people will find me.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“But a truly fine education teaches the students to be curious, to ask questions, to augment their understanding of the world around them and feel at ease in it.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“A boy named Michael Josephson from Methacton High School in Fairview Village”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“She discovered a new word on TikTok: limerence. It means “an intense desire for someone, marked by intrusive thoughts and a desire for a relationship and reciprocation.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Erin Morgenstern or Emily St. John Mandel or Sally Rooney,”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“It’s better to be yourself and have no friends than to be like your friends and have no self.” The”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Freedom of the press… means the freedom to criticize and oppose, Charley thinks. George Orwell.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“ribs.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“On the one hand, it’s unthinkable to do a hatchet job on Davi Banerjee—she’s the queen—but on the other hand, even Marie Antoinette was beheaded.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“He was invited to do a signing at McNally Jackson, Terry Gross interviewed him for NPR’s Fresh Air, and New York magazine ran a back-page profile asking him to name his favorite downtown hangouts as though he were the second coming of Norman Mailer.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Victorian fainting couch.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“She invites Honey over to her cottage for Sunday supper. I’m making my pimento cheese dip and the ham and poppy seed sliders you like. We can watch the Wild Card games in front of the fire. Honey says: Sounds heavenly. I’ll be over at five. Go Bills! followed by blue and red hearts.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“But a truly fine education teaches the students to be curious”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“It was a textbook example of a woman agreeing to something that made her uncomfortable simply so she didn’t hurt a man’s feelings”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Audre thinks of each new school year as a blank composition book”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“If you don’t stretch, you won’t grow”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“The kids who surround her every day are in the process of creating their personhood. Despite all the bumps in the road”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“quality is never the result of dumb luck. Quality comes from hard work, time, and energy.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“quality is never the result of dumb luck. Quality comes from hard work”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“We mock what we don’t understand.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Audre would never say so out loud for fear of sounding both cringey and immodest”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“If you leave yourself open to learning about the world and other people”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“up like that teacher who went to jail for sleeping with her student.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“The song changes to “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran,”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Ruth teaches third- and fourth-form English as well as a senior elective called Boarding School Lit, which has a waiting list every year because who wouldn’t want to spend a semester reading The Starboard Sea and Prep?”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“You’re too good for him, Mom,” Charley says. “You’re a fully formed adult with a successful business and a home and an awesome daughter.” Charley reaches across the table for her mother’s hand. “You’ve given Joey this whole life that he never would have had. I can’t believe he’d be stupid enough to cheat on you.” Charley can totally believe it. Trash takes itself out.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“Mr. Rivera has finally finished with the old white dudes; he’s assigned Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote. The book is a brilliant novelization of the author’s family history from the Great Migration to the 1980s.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy

“The poor fourth-form—or sophomores, as they’re known elsewhere—are probably the most overlooked class at Tiffin. They aren’t upperclassmen, nor are they ingenues like the third-form. Cordelia smiles at the girls, though she can’t recall a single one by name, and how is that possible when she would have interviewed at least some of them?”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Academy