“I couldn’t help but think about school and everything else ending. I liked standing just outside the couches and watching them—it was a kind of sad I didn’t mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.”
“Are you kidding? I m supposed to put my books in this filthy tin coffin?”
“I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.”
“But to go to school in a summer morn, O! It drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay.”
“School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn t take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.”
“I wasn t aware that was how I felt, either, until it was out. And now that I ve said it like that, I m not exactly sure it is how I feel. But this isn t a piece of paper I can crumple up and throw away. they aren t words I can cross out to start over. Now they re out, and I know they ll hang here, between us, maybe forever.”