I want my students to love to read. Reading is not a subject. Reading is a foundation of life, an activity that people who are engaged with the world do all the time

That's the beauty of art--we strive for perfection but never achieve it. The journey is everything.

The reason I love teaching, it's like being a miner. I find all these undiscovered jewels and, with the right motivation, they're amazed at what they can do. I have to show them their capability.

It’s not the job of the teacher to save a child’s soul; it is the teacher’s job to provide an opportunity for the child to save his own soul.

I don't think we expect enough of students. They just need someone to show them the way.

Teach like your hair's on fire!

I want my kids to know that they're just as good and just as American as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Dr. Martin Luther King. My worst fear is they will become ordinary.

Good teachers are an endangered species because they're giving up because of the tests and everything.

I love Shakespeare. In Shakespeare, tragedy is not just something that's bad. It's something that could be good and is bad.

Baseball is a religion in my classroom. It's a very important part of life, baseball.

I always tell the kids that excellence is like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you're not.

My first love was everything, all at once. The kind of love you fight for, the kind of boy you fight for.

Numbers tend to give the impression that there's more order in the world than there is.

If a person becomes content with what is average, minimally acceptable, or satisfactory, she will rarely exert the effort or work toward something that is truly excellent or outstanding.

But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

I never have time to cook, so I just look through the books and imagine the dishes I would make if I wasn't going out for a business dinner.

The nature of the place...whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs...generally gives hint as to its inhabitants.

I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself.

What pity 'tis, one that can speak so well, Should in his actions be so ill!

I keep very weird hours. I never know when I'm going to get an idea.