“To enter a room is to move from one environment to another and that, for the teenager, can be traumatic. There be dragons, daily horrors from acne to zit.”

“I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching.”

“You can't teach in a vacuum. A good teacher relates the material to real life. You understand that, don't you?”

“Teaching is bringing the news.”

“Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.”

“Everything in my head was secondhand, too: Catholicism; Ireland's sad history, a litany of suffering and martyrdom drummed into me by priests, schoolmasters and parents who knew no better.”

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past...”

“You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself aliv...”

“Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.”

“Time is no one's friend--time has no social niceties and holds the door for nobody nowhere. But I hold the door for time, with my one good paw.”

“He who says what he likes shall hear what he does not like.”

“Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.”