Bel Kaufman Quotes
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Apparently this r had to be worked for: Varya told me that as a child she couldn’t pronounce it properly, and that her father would make her repeat a series of exercises about gorgeous grapes growing on Mount Ararat and three hundred thirty-three drummers drumming on three hundred thirty-three drums.
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There is a need for closeness, yet we can't get too close. The teacher-pupil relationship is a kind of tightrope to be walked. I know how carefully I must choose a word, a gesture. I understand the delicate balance between friendliness and familiarity, dignity and aloofness. I am especially aware of this in trying to reclaim Ferone. I don't know why it's so important to me. Perhaps because he, too, is a rebel. Perhaps because he's been so damaged. He's too bright and too troubled to be lost in the shuffle.
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the eighteenth-century letter writer and biographer wrote: “Civility costs nothing and buys everything.
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Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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This is just the first day; you’ll get used to it. The rewards will come later, from the kids themselves–and from the unlikeliest ones.
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He was taking off his tie, the dreadful tie with the green mermaid on it. “It’s your tie, Sam—I hate it! Why must you always . . .” I’m not saying it right, she thought, not any of it.
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I’ve been a good mother,” she said. It was a plea rather than an affirmation.
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Without love, the art of love is mere acrobatics. Without love, the art of giving is mere etiquette.
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Had set out to tell you exactly what happened. But since I am the one writing this, how do I know what in my telling I am selecting, omitting, emphasizing; what unconscious editing I am doing?
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She luxuriated in these disembodied telephone conversations. “Darling, I can almost see you, almost touch you now.” It was intimate yet distant; thrilling yet safe.
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Do not weep, do not weep, my little wife: song of hope and encouragement in marriage.
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To the young ones she would say bravely that her husband did not love her, but that she could never, never hurt him.
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Your blouse is whitening on the chair and your parrot Flaubert weeps in French: she left him, and he is sorry.
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I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.
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Wrrite, wrrite, Lapochka, why you don’t wrrite?” and assure me that a horse, even with four legs, stumbles. I found it difficult to explain to her what I was writing. “It’s about Colley Cibber,” I said. “He was an actor, playwright and poet.” “Also poet?” Varya asked suspiciously. “Who he? Pushkin?”
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Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
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I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.
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St. Peter: “Who is knocking at my gate?” Voice: “It is I.” St. Peter: “Go away, we don’t need any more school teachers here!
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Funny, how once you touched off a memory, it was like pulling out a stitch—all the others kept unraveling.
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A life to live is not a field to cross; yet, somehow, in her chaotic way, Varya was able to keep the house going.
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What makes you think you’re so special? Just because you’re a teacher? What he was really saying was: You are so special. You are my teacher. Then teach me, help me, Hey, Teach, I’m lost—which way do I go? I’m tired of going up the down staircase.
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Their evenings were interminable; their Sundays were like their evenings.
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The long procession of men flickered before her like faces on cards quickly riffled—blurred, two-dimensional. Only their desire for her mattered.
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People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.