The Chalk Artist Quotes

“I want to give back.” He looked at her and said in all seriousness, “Why? What did you take?”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“He felt poor, as well, although he didn’t consider himself poor. He considered himself free.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“I taught more than one hundred kids today—and some of them were listening”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“He said, “I had to dance with all the girls who didn’t have a partner. I’d be the youngest one, and I was like a foot shorter, so I was staring straight at all these eighth-grade breasts.” “Sh!” “What? It was like the highlight of my childhood.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“Collin sat on a marble bench, chaste white, funereal, carved with the words PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT. When he opened his arms for Nina, a guard hurried over. “Sir! I’m sorry—you can’t sit there!”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“My kids are tough,” said Nina. He scoffed. “I work in Harvard Square. My art’s been peed on.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“She didn’t think that she could sway the universe, but she hoped that you could nudge it with a prayer.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“Sometimes its like Nathaniel Hawthorne is trying to be deep.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“This was her version of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll—dating a chalk artist, and teaching school.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“He’d told her about his asphalt water lilies and his sidewalk Van Goghs,”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“There is such a thing as reincarnation. If you teach long enough, the same kids keep coming back again.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“They lay together where they fell, and it was sweet and it was surprising, like waking up together in bed.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“Teddy Shoes, where you could buy patent-leather pumps with a kitten heel in men’s thirteen.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“Kids can tell when teachers are trying,” Collin said. “It’s like how dogs smell fear.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“Required personal discovery seemed like an oxymoron to Nina, but so did many other aspects of the school.”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist

“the only thing you care about is the beginning and the end. You can never be in the middle; you can never actually be with someone or learn something or get something done, because you’re always starting and then leaving,”
― Allegra Goodman, The Chalk Artist