"This is a hopeful book about those who fail. Lives on the Boundary concerns language and human connection, literacy and culture, and it focuses on those who have trouble reading and writing in the schools and the workplace. It is a book about the abilities hidden by class and cultural barriers. And it is a book about movement: about what happens as people who have failed begin to participate in the educational system that has seemed so harsh and distant to them." (Preface, pg. xi)

"But the anger and frustration of South Vermont could prove too strong for music's illusion; then it was violence that provided deliverance of a different order." (Chapter 2, pg. 17)

"I certainly was not MacFarland's best student; most of the other guys in College Prep, even my fellow slackers, had better backgrounds than I did. But I worked very hard, for MacFarland had hooked me...