Educated Quotes
"The shape of that dent lasts only a moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind."
"I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school."
"When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected."
"MY STRONGEST MEMORY IS NOT A MEMORY. IT’S SOMETHING I imagined, then came to remember as if it had happened."
"Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good."
"It’s too bad your mother got a bad one her first time. The next one will be easier."
"A son of mine, standing in line to get brainwashed by socialists and Illuminati spies—"
"There’s two kinds of them college professors: those who know they’re lying, and those who think they’re telling the truth."
"The days were still hot but the evenings had begun to cool, the frigid hours after sunset claiming more of each day."
"I hadn't yet grasped the rules of this new world."
"He said he would miss me, then he let me go."
"He can't explain where the conviction came from, or how it burned brightly enough to shine through the black uncertainty."
"I was experiencing nostalgia for the life I’d had before, which I would lose at any second, when the world turned and began to devour itself."
"Perhaps the perspective was his, that of the brother I hated, and loved."
"She didn’t seem frivolous, didn’t seem like the type who’d waste an entire day fretting over her white carpet."
"But feral horses don’t yield easily, not even to a man like Grandpa."
"We tried not to name them, these beasts we hoped to tame, but we had to refer to them somehow."
"Their natures hadn’t changed. They were pitiless, powerful avatars from another world."
"I was terrified of horses, or I was terrified of what I thought horses were—that is, thousand-pound devils whose ambition was to dash brains against rock."
"Those instincts were my guardians. They had saved me before, guiding my movements on a dozen bucking horses."
"He said he could see the path I was going down and it was not good."
"I snorted. 'Is that what we are?' I said. 'Homeschoolers?'"
"I had never allowed myself to imagine what happened after—Dad’s decision to leave him by the pickup."
"The truth is this: that I am not a good daughter. I am a traitor, a wolf among sheep; there is something different about me and that difference is not good."
"I stood, and once on my feet, didn’t care whether the cables were attached. I walked out of the room."
"The scratch of pencils on paper, the clack of a projector moving to the next slide, the peal of the bells signaling the end of class—all were drowned out by the clatter of iron and the roar of diesel engines."
"I remember strange details about the moment we pulled into the parking lot—the smell of oil floating up from our leather gloves, the sandpaper feel of dust on my fingertips."
"Every night was the same. Through dinner, Dad would list all the false theories of science that his genius son would disprove; then after dinner, I would tell Richard about college, about classes, books, professors, things I knew would appeal to his innate need to learn."
"I could not have articulated this, not as I sweated through those searing afternoons in the forklift. I did not have the language I have now. But I understood this one fact: that a thousand times I had been called Nigger, and laughed, and now I could not laugh."
"To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else’s."
"For as long as I could remember, whenever I was in pain, whether from a cut or a toothache, Mother would make a tincture of lobelia and skullcap. It had never lessened the pain, not one degree."
"I developed stomach ulcers. Once, Jenni found me curled up on a stranger’s lawn, halfway between campus and our apartment. My stomach was on fire; I was shaking with the pain, but I wouldn’t let her take me to a hospital."
"I saw many more images in the coming weeks. I’d heard of the Great Depression years before when I’d played Annie, but the slides of men in hats and long coats lined up in front of soup kitchens were new to me."
"In my mind, it acquired a kind of mystical power. I studied with the intensity of the insane, believing that if I could best this exam, win that impossible perfect score, even with my broken toe and without Charles to help me, it would prove that I was above it all. Untouchable."
"I’d never kissed a boy. I had witnessed birth, but I’d been given none of the facts of conception. While my father and brother shouted, ignorance kept me silent: I couldn’t defend myself, because I didn’t understand the accusation."
"You need to learn to accept help, even from the Government."
"Just get the paperwork together," she said. "See how it feels."
"The check is for four thousand dollars, but I only need fourteen hundred."
"Remember," he said, "you can apply for the same amount next year."
"I’m from Idaho," a phrase that has never felt comfortable in my mouth.
"You’re saying the check is for too much money? What do you want me to do?"
"I’d go if it were serious," I said. "I’d go if it were serious."
"I’m just standing," I said. "You are all trying to compensate, to get your bodies lower because the height scares you."
"Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known."
"It was a single massive room the size of the chapel at church."
"Essential oils were popular, and Mother had the best on the market."
"Dad explained that they were taking the bulk of their profits and reconsecrating them to God."
"It’s like talking to someone who wasn’t even there."
"I had to strangle the sobs quickly—Dad would never take me seriously if I couldn’t."
"We shot them, in the head or the heart, so it was quick."
"Shawn chose a knife, and a knife whose blade was barely bigger than his thumb."
"I can fix it, I chanted as the plane lifted off the tarmac."
"It was as if he realized we were making a memory, something beautiful we might need later."
"The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you."
"Reality became fluid. The ground gave way beneath my feet, dragging me downward, spinning fast, like sand rushing through a hole in the bottom of the universe."
"I had come to reclaim that life, to save it. But there was nothing here to save, nothing to grasp."
"I knew that if Tyler confronted my parents—they would force him to choose between me and them. And from Audrey I had learned: he would not choose me."
"Her classroom was a heap of junk. Her textbooks, slates of scrap. And yet she had something precious that I did not."
"My first week back in Cambridge, I awoke nearly every night in the street, having run there, shouting, asleep."
"So that’s a panic attack, I thought the next morning."
"Between insults and fits of temper, I said I needed a year to heal myself."
"I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old grievances."
"I could hear his hand-wringing through the long echo of the telephone."
"My phone rang again two days later. The whole thing had exploded in his face."
"The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self."
"I passed and returned to London, where Drew had a job and we’d rented a flat."