46 quotes found
“It was only a couple of chickens. Real chickens. The kind that walk around clucking and pecking. Which is what they were doing. Only no one else seemed to care, or even notice. This is normal? Obvi...”
“The only thing worse than losing hope is to be the reason someone else loses hope.”
“An individual school can handle a resident idiot from time to time, but an entire school system is only as good as its weakest leader.”
“Farid asked, 'Do American teachers care about every student?'I thought about a humanities teacher Id worked with in Korea and more recently a science teacher Id worked with in Germany. I said, 'I t...”
“Cope? Adapt? Uh, no. These are military kids. They roll with it. I once asked a new student, 'See any familiar faces?' She pointed out various kids and replied, 'Seattle, Tampa, Okinawa, New Jersey...”
“Sami and I had exactly one day together in the old world. On Tuesday the jihadists came to our front door and knocked down our buildings. Our new world was hijacked planes, anthrax, and Afghanistan...”
“For the first time in a decade I felt a voice rising from deep inside my soul. It cried out what will you be today? and I heard relentless booming from the rafters inside an old gym as Sami and a g...”
“It feels like last week, but in fact were now closing in on five thousand days at war. I always picture Sami as a nine-year-old soccer stud ... and yet there are soldiers in Afghanistan today who w...”
“Im sure the driver was a great guy and all he wanted was to drive me to my hotelbut he was a complete stranger to me and the truth is that being vigilant isnt a part-time job, its not about being n...”
“Far to our left I could see a commercial airliner on final approach to Soekarno-Hatta. Far to our right I could see the outline of tall city buildings. The imagery was hard to ignore. In the midst ...”
“My dad once told me that his biggest challenge after returning from Vietnam had been coming to terms with his own callousness. Hed made a deal with the war and traded his humanity for a ticket home.”
“We obviously dont live in a perfect world. If we did, then my dad would never have volunteered for Vietnam so he could use the GI Bill to pay for college, Uncle Google would have more important thi...”
“America isn’t perfect but there’s not a better place in the world for people of any faith.”
“Some people have a heart to do evil and they don’t care if you’re Muslim or Christian.”
“The only thing I knew for sure is I hadn’t slept in ten years. Not really. I’d been fighting my own monster since nine months after 9/11. I had regrets. I had pain that I still can’t find words to ...”
“As long as you know 'to let' means to rent and not a place to pee, you’re all set to travel in the UK. The lifts and the boots and everything else don’t really matter.”
“The Delta agent saw my itinerary and said, 'You’re flying to Jakarta via Atlanta, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur? You must have really pissed off your travel agent.”
“I said, “Je parle français.” Indira gave me a weird look. Or a look that said I was weird. Whichever. The point is, I don’t really speak French, but it’s a useful phrase for confusing people you do...”
“I’d see the arrow. I’d think about attitude and perception. Maybe the green arrow on the ceiling is to Muslims as the KJV in the Motel 6 nightstand is to Christians.”
“I knew a teacher that kept a calendar on his desk. He didn’t use it for lesson planning though. Instead he was marking time until summer. That’s what prisoners do on walls. They mark the days until...”
