Highschool Quotes

Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beered up.

Can't you just like a girl who likes you back?' 'None of them likes me back. I may as well like the one I really want.

He inclined his head at my dress. "What's the occasion?" "Homecoming," I said, twirling. "Like?" "Last I heard, Homecoming requires a date." "About that," I hedged. "I'm sort of...going with Scott. We both figure a high-school dance is the last place Hank will be patrolling." Patch smiled, but it was tight. "I take that back. If Hank wants to shoot Scott, he has my blessing.

Well my music was different in high school; I was singing about love—you know, things I don't care about anymore.

Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.

High school sucked. It was a universal truth, and whoever said these were supposed to be the best years of your life was probably drunk or delusional.

High School. Society’s bright idea to put all their aggressive, naive youth into one environment to torment and emotionally scar each other for life.

High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless.

Most people felt lost after high school. Sometimes I felt like I'd never really been found in the first place.

High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship - nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change.

When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness.

That's the pathetic thing about high school. Everyone tries so hard to be something they aren't. It's gotten so I don't know who I am, so how can I even try to be who I am, much less who I'm not? My problem is that I don't even fit in with the misfits. I don't fit anywhere.

Problem is, the bathroom pass can't help you escape life. It's still there when you come out. Problems and crap don't go away hiding in the can.

It was only high school after all, definitely one of the most bizarre periods in a person’s life. How anyone can come through that time well adjusted on any level is an absolute miracle.

You only get to walk variations of the same lines everyone has already drawn for you.

Elrond,” Bruce said. “The Council of Elrond. From Lord of the Rings. It’s the meeting where they decide to destroy the One Ring.” “Jesus,” Annie said. “None of you got laid in high school, did you?

I think we're given multiple chances to meet multiple soulmates. Sure, you could meet a soulmate in highschool. But that doesn't mean if you don't act on it, you'll never meet anyone else. You will, just at a time that's more convenient for you.

For the record, I would like to point out that it is NOT being obsessive to memorize a boy's schedule so that you can accidentally bump into him. It is called being efficient.

Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added. Radar tapped a locker twice with his fist to show his approval, and then came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force.

Being kind is one of the hardest thing to be in high school because you're so terrified of being cut down yourself that you're always on your guard. But don't be like that. Be kind and you will be truly different. A standout. Unique and happy.

High school wasn't a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.

The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.

There are a million rules for being a girl. There are a million things you have to do to get through each day. High school has things that can trip you up, ruin you, people say one thing and mean another, and you have to know all the rules, you have to know what you can and can't do.

Imagine 4 years. Four years, two suicides, one death, one rape, two pregnancies (one abortion), three overdoses, countless drunken antics, pantsings, spilled food, theft, fights, broken limbs, turf wars–every day, a turf war–six months until graduation and no one gets a medal when they get out. But everything you do here counts. High school.

I suppose he's making a real fashion statement, but this is high school. You're not supposed to be real. You're supposed to be enough like everyone else to get through and out into the waiting world.

I hated high school. I don’t trust anybody who looks back on the years from 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there’s something wrong with you.

Mean girls go far in high school. Kind women go far in LIFE.

Don't be special." That's what I would say to my younger self if I could pinpoint the moment when I went astray. But there was no one moment. I was always astray

Did you meet your soul mate? That always happens on the first day of school, right?' 'Oh God, Charlie, she's letting you read again! You went straight to the paranormal section, didn't you?

When we get out of highschool we'll look back and know we did everything right, that we kissed the cutest boys and went to the best parties, got in just enough trouble, listened to our music too loud, smoked too many cigarettes, and drank too much and laughed too much and listened too little, or not al all.

What's wrong with me? ... I might seem like the ideal student: homework always in early, every extra credit and extra curricular I can get my hands on, the good girl and the high achiever. But I realized something just now: it's not ambition, not entirely. It's fear. Because I don't know who I am when I'm not working, when I'm not focused on or totally consumed by a task. Who am I between the projects and the assignments, when there's nothing to do? I haven't found her yet and it scares me. Maybe that's why, for my senior capstone project this year, I decided to solve a murder.

All those people who are chained here thinking that their reputations matter and this little shit matters are so freaking shortsighted. Dude, what matters is that you're happy. What matters is your future. What matters is that we get out of here in one piece. What matters is finding the truth of our own lives, not caring about what other people think is the truth of us.

In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew

I failed angst in high school. They let me graduate anyway.

A lot of kids think high school represents the best years of their lives, but others recognize that it's mostly irrelevant bullshit, and that life doesn't even begin until afterward.

I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself.

Educate not Legislate Refusing to pass unnecessary laws requires a converse – encouraging education and understanding. We started by slashing the salaries of legislators (Dubbed “Bloodbath on the Beltway”). That move provided funds to instigate incentive programs for high school teachers – to attract the best and brightest. The result was a generation of bright, energetic 18-year-olds graduating high-school, equipped to tackle the future.

I didn’t know what was more disturbing—the fact that something was obviously wrong, or that three faculty members of the world’s premiere spy school had forgotten to lock the door.

Take a limitation and turn it into an opportunity. Take an opportunity and turn it into an adventure by dreaming BIG!

We could love and not be suckers. We could dream and not be losers. It was such a beautiful time. Everything was possible because we didn't know anything yet.

You need to be more careful, or you could hurt yourself." Right. Thank you, Mrs. Detweiler. I never would have come to that conclusion by myself. I was planning on incorporating a backflip into my next walk across the classroom but on second thought...

It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that.

They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.

This is followed by laughter because we're in high school, which means we're predictable and almost everything is funny, especially if it's someone else's public humiliation.

And I understood why he didn’t need friends or to be accepted at our shitty racist high school, because he had his music, and that was so much better than anything we had to offer.

One day soon you'll be in the world, and you'll have so many options you won't know what to do with them. Everyone will fall in love with you, because you're so beautiful and so charming, and you'll look back on high school as such a tiny blip.

I ended up dropping out of high school. I'm a high school dropout, which I'm not proud to say, ... I had some teachers that I still think of fondly and were amazing to me. But I had other teachers who said, 'You know what? This dream of yours is a hobby. When are you going to give it up?' I had teachers who I could tell didn't want to be there. And I just couldn't get inspired by someone who didn't want to be there

Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia

I mean if there was any justice in the world you wouldn't even have to go to school during your period. You'd just stay home for five days and eat chocolate and cry.

The hope was, people like me got to finally find our place in college or in the actual world. People who understood this told you that high school wasn't the actual world, that it was more like a temporary alternate reality you were forced to believe in for four years. A video game you played, where you could never get to the next level no matter how hard you tried.

The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.

Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.

It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.

There is no force in high school more powerful than one person's blunt disagreement.

This just didn’t happen to girls like me. This just didn’t happen to anyone.

It's like high school holds two different worlds, revolving around each other and never touching; the haves and the have-nots. I guess it's a good thing. High school is supposed to prepare you for the real world, after all.

Since this was a formal undead gathering, there would be food—all kinds—drinks, dancing, and festivities, while those in power pondered whether or not to slaughter half the people around them. In other words, like a high-school prom.

Nobody wants to give up a weekend-long excuse to dress up and attempt to outshine one another.

It's just high school, man. Those guys are just high school guys, and in ten years they're going to be working for people like me. I know that. I just have to make it through two more years.

Maybe they notice me wincing whenever I hear them say it, but I don't know: there are all sorts of reasons I could be wincing. Life is a wince-a-thon.

Be careful who you call crazy. Some of us think it's a compliment.

The ones who stay unnoticed often see the most. They live out other people's lives, since their own are so unremarkable...

Those aren't girls. They're vultures.

I feel like I might start crying and that I'm going to cry pee.

Silence has always been my default mode—my best defense against the rest of the world.

And the crazy part of it was even if you were clever, even if you spent your adolescence reading John Donne and Shaw, even if you studied history or zoology or physics and hoped to spend your life pursuing some difficult and challenging career, you still had a mind full of all the soupy longings that every high-school girl was awash in... underneath it, all you longed to be was annihilated by love, to be swept off your feet, to be filled up by a giant prick spouting sperm, soapsuds, silk and satins and, of course, money.

I guess high school really is ancient history,” she concludes. Ancient history? Have you really relegated us to the trash heap of the Dumb High-School Romance? And if that’s the case, why the hell can’t I do the same?

The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.

Sometimes I think high school is one long hazing activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become and adult. I hope it's worth it.

Education is every day and everywhere, the only thing you have to pay is attention.

Getting into a fight with a popular senior. Pissing off a school teacher and the local chief of police. Hanging with two major-league losers." She slapped my back. "Welcome to high school.

If a fight looks like a lot of fun, you should be suspicious. 'If you ain't scared of standing up for what's right, you ain't standing up for much.

It's as if once you hit high school, you're programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents.

To me, socializing was like sinking to the bottom of a deep, deep ocean... Until eventually you couldn't take it anymore, and had to come up for air" - Shimamura - Adachi to Shimamura

We were supposed to be an English literature class, but Miss Nesbitt used literature to teach real life. She said she didn't have time to teach us like a regular English teacher--we were too far behind. Instead, she taught us the world through literature.

There's always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.

We had grown into one another somewhere along the way. We were officially a team.

I'm a man without a country. Or I'm a man with too many countries-you pick. Ultimately, in both global politics and the high school power hierarchy, they amount to the same thing.

They'll try to make you forget who you are or try to make you ashamed. But you mustn't forget and you mustn't be ashamed.

The truth doesn't get you very far on the streets, or in a group home, or even in high school. That's probably why the idea of Liars, Inc. appealed to me. Everybody lies. You might as well get paid for it.

Everyone is born a freak," notes Hayley. "Every newborn baby, wet and hungry and screaming, is a fresh-hatched freak who wants to have a good time and make the world a better place. . . . Most teenagers wind up in high school. And high school is where the zombification process becomes deadly.

I had also never realized before that I loved him, but I did. And his pain was my pain, and it hurt, but it also felt good in a strange way, knowing that we could share in it together.

When people think of food stamps they don't envision someone like me, someone plain faced and white, someone like the girl they'd known in highschool, someone who'd been quiet but nice, someone like a neighbor, someone like them. Maybe that made them too nervous about their own situation. Maybe they saw in me the chance of their own fragile circumstances, that with one lost job, one divorce, they'd be in the same place as me.

We all say and do things we regret, but it’s never to late to change, apologize and become a better person

Pretty much everyone hates high school. It's a measure of your humanity, I suspect. If you enjoyed high school, you were probably a psychopath or a cheerleader. Or possibly both. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, you know. I've tried to block out the memory of my high school years, but no matter how hard you try, it's always with you, like an unwanted hitchhiker. Or herpes. I assume...

This was a factory, a sorting house. We were no different from dogs and pigs and cows: all of us were allowed to play when we were small, but then, just before reaching maturity, we were sorted and classified. Being a high school student was the first step toward becoming a domestic animal.

Close your eyes, real tight, and then count to three hundred. That’s all you have to do. You just count to three hundred, and when you open your eyes, five minutes will have passed. And even if it hurts or things are shitty or you don’t know what to do, you just made it through five whole minutes. And when it feels like you can’t go on, you just close your eyes and do it again. That’s all you need. Just five minutes at a time.

I reached down and picked up a baseball bat at my feet and I flung it as hard as it could. It circled and arced high in the air until it slammed against the side of the dining hall with a crack and fell. I sat down in the dirt. Then I lay down in the dirt. Because not only was there no trail to follow, there was no evidence he’d ever been here. There was no evidence any of them had been here.

Wherever in this city, screens flicker with pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash, we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties of our own neighborhoods. We need to grasp our lives inseperable from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces, and the red begonia perilously flashing from a tenement sill six stories high, or the long-legged young girls playing ball in the junior highschool playground. No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.

I know what you're thinking. ‘How the hell does this broke ass piece of trailer trash know words like caveat,’ right? Well guess what? I've read every single book on the New York Times list of 'Top 100 Literary Classics,' not to mention every Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath or Bronte sisters’ book ever written. And fuck you very much for judging me, by the way.

If you skip one class, everyone knows about it. The teacher will track you down, or one of the guidance counselors will track you down and ask if you're smoking pot. According to the geniuses running this place, the only reason you would skip class is if you're smoking pot, though I actually find my classes more enjoyable when I'm high.

A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer who came to Harlem from Panama five years ago, and only then discovered the conflict between races, asked me, "Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?" "Oh, Una, I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts." But I base my life on this belief.

Jocks were pretty much exempt from the standards that bound the rest of us. Teachers and administrators humor them because it's in everyone's interests to coax them through school and get them out of the building. Since it's unethical to turn them loose on society, they get sent to college to be kept out of the mix until their frontal lobes develop more fully. As enticement they are given sports scholarships that will later amount to nothing, not even good health.

WAKE Dealing with an alcoholic single mother and endless hours of working at Heather Nursing Home to raise money for college, high-school senior Janie Hannagan doesn’t need more problems. But inexplicably, since she was eight years old, she has been pulled in to people’s dreams, witnessing their recurring fears, fantasies and secrets. Through Miss Stubin at Heather Home, Janie discovers that she is a dream catcher with the ability to help others resolve their haunting dreams. After taking an interest in former bad boy Cabel, she must distinguish between the monster she sees in his nightmares and her romantic feelings for him. And when she learns more about Cabel’s covert identity, Janie just may be able to use her special dream powers to help solve crimes in a suspense-building ending with potential for a sequel. McMann lures teens in by piquing their interest in the mysteries of the unknown, and keeps them with quick-paced, gripping narration and supportive characters.

They had been pathetically eager to have the wedding in the family church. Their reaction though, as far as she could estimate the reactions of people who were now so remote from her, was less elated glee than a quiet, rather smug satisfaction, as though their fears about the effects of her university education, never stated but aways apparent, had been calmed at last. They had probably been worried she would turn into a high-school teacher or a maiden aunt or a dope addict or a female executive, or that she would undergo some shocking physical transformation, like developing muscles and a deep voice or growing moss.

I’d felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we’d all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around. A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess. And wasn’t that just how life usually felt—a confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow?

HOO JAMES SHIN HOO. Born: James Hoo in Chicago. Age: 50. Added Shin to his name when he went into the restaurant business because it sounded more Chinese. First wife died of cancer five years ago. Married again last year. Has one son: Douglas. SUN LIN HOO. Age: 28. Born in China. Immigrated from Hong Kong two years ago. Gossip: James Hoo married her for her 100-year-old sauce. DOUGLAS HOO (called Doug). Age: 18. High-school track star. Is competing in Saturday’s track meet against college milers. Westing connection: Hoo sued Sara Westing over the invention of the disposable paper diaper. Case never came to court (Westing disappeared). Settled with the company last year for $25,000. Thinks he was cheated. Latest invention: paper innersoles.

But I know I didn't love school for school's sake. I had never really been what people call an 'academic' person, nor did I see myself becoming one. Instead, I took pleasure in the fact that my work existed in a social setting, one that was based on the promise of a brighter future. I knew that what I adored about school was that each of my assignments - readings, essays, or in-class presentations - was inseparable from my relationships [...] If I loved school at all, I loved it for what it provided me access to: bonds with people I grew to cherish. And nothing was better than working toward my dreams alongside people I loved who were doing the same.