I would like to give few quotes which I like the most. The last is a part of Patrick’s letter to his daughter. If you unable to read whole book, just read that letter, at Chapter 10.
“There was a cliché about teaching: Once a teacher, always a teacher. But there was truth to it. Your sense of responsibility to your students never leaves you. You wonder about the different paths they might have taken. You wonder if you failed them.”
“For the sake of children’s education today—for the sake of real life, as he put it—people should concentrate on having quality education delivered to the schools these blacks are attending. W. E. B. Du Bois’s words in 1935 seemed prescient: There is no magic to either segregated or mixed schools, he warned. The Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is Education.”
“Time,” he said. “You can’t go back in time. Everything that happen is about cause and effect. One day lead to another. And now I’m here.”
“I mean that it frightens me that so little was required for him to develop intellectually—a quiet room, a pile of books, and some adult guidance.”
“You and I are canoeing down the Mississippi River. There are so many trees, bunched together in the water like bushes. The river is shadowy in some places, but the light shines through cracks of the trees. Near the bank there is a great blue heron, standing still, searching for fish. And as we are passing, a silver carp surfaces as if it is jewelry in the water. You say, “Dad look a snake.” I say, “Where” and you say, “No it’s just a vine.” We hear splashes, the fish jumping or the frogs croaking. The white light glitters on the muddy water, which you say looks like coffee.”
