Lisa Cook

“I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren’t we unfortunate babies to be born as the world ended? After that there was no chance for the planet, and no chance for us. Or maybe it was just the end of one civilisation, ours, and at some point in the future another will take its place. In that case we are standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“In many ways, poetry serves no purpose. It cannot cure sickness, it cannot end wars, it cannot feed the hungry. And yet, a society without poetry is not a society at all. We need poetry to make sense of ourselves and the world around us. We need poetry to examine, on a microscopic level, beauty and pain and everything in between. We need poetry as much as we need our own humanity.”
― Elaine Hsieh Chou, Disorientation

“We almost never know what we know until after we know it.”
― Susan Choi, Trust Exercise

“The classroom is a place of high drama. You'll never know what you've done to, or for, the hundreds coming and going. You see them leaving the classroom: dreamy, flat, sneering, admiring, smiling, puzzled. After a few years you develop antennae. You can tell when you've reached them or alienated them. It's chemistry. It's psychology. It's animal instinct. You are with the kids and, as long as you want to be a teacher, there's no escape. Don't expect help from the people who've escaped the classroom, the higher-ups. They're busy going to lunch and thinking higher thoughts. It's you and the kids. So, there's the bell. See you later. Find what you love and do it.”
― Frank McCourt, Teacher Man