"And yet in the modern world, our love of children can become dangerously narrowed, constrained, narcissistic, and in the end turn to something other than love, something unintended, something like indifference." (Preface, xi)

"Big schools tend to be mechanistic and managerial, hierarchical and bureaucratic." (Preface, xiv)

"When I ride the train and sit next to a person of the opposite race/I feel like a crow in a robin's nest/ And I feel dirty." (Chapter 1, "Beginning: The Challenge of Teaching," 2)

"Teachers must be experts and generalists, psychologists and cops, rabbis and priests, judges and gurus. And that's not all." (Chapter 1, "Beginning: The Challenge of Teaching," 4)

"If I were to brainstorm a list of things I can't do or can't do well ... I could fill a chalkboard in just a few seconds. ... Now imagine some school administrator or teacher constructing a curriculum designed to correct these deficiencies in me...