Lit Graduation Quotes

We could never agree about Boogie and I didn't share Miriam's reverence for professors. In fact, just in case I haven't mentioned it before, the pride of my office wall is my framed high-school graduation certificate, lit from above. Miriam has reproached me for it. "Take it down, darling," she once pleaded. But it still hangs there.

When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and “discover themselves.” The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire.

This is me, this is who I am. This is Sasha Stone, who would have graduated as valedictorian and gone to Oberlin, who would have been on a dark stage in a few years, wearing black, unable to see the audience because of stage lights but feeling them there, their eyes on her though an entire orchestra was onstage. Sasha Stone always garnered the attention. Sasha Stone stood out in a sea of stars. But somehow I am here, not on a darkened stage but in a badly lit room with flickering fluorescents that hum to match the mechanical hearts of my audience members. I am here, with a harsh line down the middle of my face to match the one on my chest, a line that—should I ever make any stage—could never be covered by makeup. The light would seek it out. Illuminate it. All imperfections glare in the spotlight.

The party spills over with guests, from the ballroom to the front lawn. It’s nighttime, but the house is lit up, bright as the sun. All around me diamonds glitter. We’ve reached that tipping point where everyone is sloshed enough to smile, but not so much they start to slur. There’s almost too many people, almost too much alcohol. Almost too much wealth in one room. It reminds me of Icarus, with his wings of feather and wax. If Icarus had a five-hundred-person guest list for his graduation party. It reminds me of flying too close to the sun. I snag a flute of champagne from one of the servers, who pretends not to see. The bubbles tickle my nose as I take a detour through the kitchen. Rosita stands at the stove, stirring her world-famous jambalaya in a large cast iron pot. The spices pull me close. I reach for a spoon. “Is it ready yet?” She slaps my hand away. “You’ll ruin your pretty dress. It’ll be ready when it’s ready.” We have caterers who make food for all our events, but since this is my graduation party, Rosita agreed to make my favorite dish. She’s going to spoon some onto little puff pastry cups and call it a canape. I try to pout, but everything is too perfect for that. Only one thing is missing from this picture. I give her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Rosita. Have you seen Daddy?” “Where he always is, most likely.” That’s what I’m afraid of. Then I’m through the swinging door that leads into the private side of the house. I pass Gerty, our event planner, who’s muttering about guests who aren’t on the invite list. I head up the familiar oak staircase, breathing in the scent of our house. There’s something so comforting about it. I’m going to miss everything when I leave for college. At the top of the stairs, I hear men’s voices. That isn’t unusual. I’m around the corner from Daddy’s offic

The School of General Studies conferred grades, while in graduate school there were no exams at all. When one had taken 30 credits and had gone through a seminar in Modern American Lit., where one chose the topic for the master thesis, then there were two days of written exams: a four hour written exam in the major and next day a four hour written test in the minor. If one passed both, then one had to complete the thesis, the topic of which had been chosen and the work already started in the seminar course.

The real perfect storm fueling the opioid epidemic had been the collapse of work, followed by the rise in disability and its parallel, pernicious twin: the flood of painkillers pushed by rapacious pharma companies and regulators who approved one opioid pill after another. Declining workforce participation wasn't just a rural problem anymore; it was everywhere, albeit to a lesser degree in areas with physicians who prescribed fewer opioids and higher rates of college graduates. As Monnat put it: "When work no longer becomes an option for people, what you have at the base is a structural problem, where the American dream becomes a scam." She likened the epidemic's spread not to crabgrass but a wildfire: "If the economic collapse was the kindling in this epidemic, the opiates were the spark that lit the fire." And the helicopters were nowhere in sight.

She could show up for class naked and singing Queen songs, and they’d use her as an example of modern Dionysian behavior. Her supposed graduate career is just a cover for the life she’s not openly allowed to lead.) Instead she’s here, in this sterile, brightly lit place, watching a woman’s blood—a friend’s blood—spread across the tile floor like a benediction.

I’m a hired jailer,” said Ignace. “I graduated from our Académie this spring, and then I was forced to work in the Glass Dungeon due to my Fire Mage Gift.” His boyish face fell in a pained grimace. “Fire Mage?” Adelaide squinted. Well, there must be Fire Mages, if there are Ice Mages. “I’d rather not show you right now,” Ignace said sheepishly. “Until Madame needs her hearth lit.

Declan had been told a long time ago that he had to know what he wanted, or he'd never get it. Not by his father, because his father would never have delivered such pragmatic advice in such a pragmatic way. No, even if Niall Lynch believed in the sentiment, he would have wrapped it up in a long story filled with metaphor and magic and nonsense riddles. Only years after the storytelling would Declan be sitting somewhere and realize that all along Niall had been trying to teach him to balance his checkbook, or whatever the tale had really been about. Niall could never just say the thing. No, this piece of advice--You have to know what you want, or you'll never get it--was given to Declan by a senator from Nevada he'd met during a DC field trip back in eighth grade. The other children had been bored by the pale stone restraint of the city and the sameness of the law and government offices they toured. Declan, however, had been fascinated. He'd asked the senator what advice he had for those looking to get into politics. "Come from money," the senator had said first, and then when all the eighth graders and their teachers had stared without laughing, he added, "You have to know what you want, or you'll never get it. Make goals." Declan made goals. The goal was DC. The goal was politics. The goal was structure, and more structure, and yet more structure. He took AP classes on political science and policy. When he traveled with his father to black markets, he wrote papers. When he took calls from gangsters and shady antique auction houses, he arranged drop-offs near DC and wrangled meetings with HR people. Aglionby Academy made calls and pulled strings; he got names, numbers, internships. All was going according to plan. His father's will conveniently left him a townhouse adjacent to DC. Declan pressed on. He kept his brothers alive; he graduated; he moved to DC. He made the goal, he went towards the goal. When he took his first lunch meeting with his new boss, he found himself filled with the same anticipation he'd had as an eighth grader. This was the place, he thought, where things happened. Just across the road was the Mexican embassy. Behind him was the IMF. GW Law School was a block away. The White House, the USPS, the Red Cross, all within a stone's throw. This was before he understood there was no making it for him. He came from money, yeah, but the wrong kind of money. Niall Lynch's clout was not relevant in this daylight world; he only had status in the night. And one could not rise above that while remaining invisible to protect one's dangerous brother. On that first day of work, Declan walked into the Renwick Gallery and stood inside an installation that had taken over the second floor around the grand staircase. Tens of thousands of black threads had been installed at points all along the ceiling, tangling around the Villareal LED sculpture that normally lit the room, snarling the railing over the stairs, blocking out the light from the tall arches that bordered the walls, turning the walkways into dark, confusing rabbit tunnels. Museumgoers had to pick their way through with caution lest they be snared and bring the entire world down with them. He had, bizarrely, felt tears burning the corners of his eyes. Before that, he hadn't understood that his goals and what he wanted might not be the same thing. This was where he'd found art.

They have the place to themselves and for a while they simply sit and look out at the view, her body relaxing into his. The cloudless sky is a spectacular wash of graduated colors- navy highest above them, fading to lighter cyan closer to the earth, under-lit by the rosy blush of the sun hovering upon the horizon. There is a peace to the place, a certain stillness, nothing but the setting sun and the occasional silhouette of a soaring bird to distract from the awe-inspiring view.

He pushed the door, slamming it shut, then slammed his lips against mine. Shock held me immobile, but I really should have seen it coming. I’d said I couldn't fuck him because I was his boss. Then I’d fired him. It didn't take a high school graduate to add those numbers up. And yet I didn't immediately push him away. Why? Because holy god, he kissed like the devil, all sinful and intoxicating. Lucas whatever-his-name-was hit my bloodstream like pure cocaine and lit me up like a fucking Christmas tree.

It was January, and the bucolic town of Waverly was covered with snow. Fires were lit; coffee was sipped; and the library at the University of Yarrow was filled with students. Most yearned to be somewhere else, their hearts pulsing with big ideas and plans for after graduation, or at least for Friday night. On the library’s third floor, a junior named Oscar Mendez could no longer take the musty stacks, so he zipped his parka and headed outside in the late afternoon