Quotes & Sayings About Back To School Night

In high school Peggy Paula worked as a waiteress at the Perkins. Night shifts were her favorite, kids from her school would come in after games or dances with bleary eyes and messy hair and Peggy Paula knew they'd been drinking and smoking those flimsy joints she'd see them passing, the girls with smudged makeup and rat's nests in the back of their heads, proud unblinking eyes, scanning the dining room like I dare you, I dare you to guess what I just let Jared or Steve or Casey do to me, I let him and I liked it and I don't care. — Lindsay Hunter

At lunch I turned my phone on to check my messages. Georgia always sent me a few inane texts during the day, and sure enough there were two messages from her: one complaining about her physics teacher and a second, also obviously sent from her phone: I love you, baby. V.
I wrote her back: I thought I told you to buzz off last night, you creep-o French stalker guy.
Her response came back immediately: As if! Your beet-red cheeks this morning suggest otherwise ... liar! You're so into him.
I groaned and was about to turn my phone off when I saw that there was a third text from UNKNOWN. Clicking on it, I read: Can I pick you up from school? Same place, same time?
I texted back: How'd you get my number?
Called myself from your phone while you were in the restaurant's bathroom last night. Warned you we were stalkers! — Amy Plum

This is shitty to say, but there's not much pathos involved in a case like that. Think about it: Little So-and-so the Fourth drowns himself Tuesday night after receiving his midterm grades in the school of civil engineering. The body goes back to Westchester, and a lounge in the library or a nature path gets named after him, and a bunch of blue-blood kids remember him fondly. Sorry. There's about one story a year like that. Poor Billy Fuckup, Jr., in his Gap khakis, the pressure of going to classes all day really got to him. If I were a better person, I would have felt badly having seen things like that. — Cara Hoffman

It's just that even though I'm totally old and unhip,I remember what boys in high school were like.Especially the kind like Jack Caputo."
"What kind is that?"
"The kind that doesn't even walk a girl to the door."
I rolled my eyes. "Well,he would have, but he had to go drop off his other dates. There were three of us." My dad finally cracked a smile. "Good night,old man," I said,giving him a hug.
"Wait a sec,honey.Did I do that okay?"
I pulled back. "Do what okay?" It hit me then that this was my first dance since my mom died.I felt a little guilty that I hadn't realized it before. It was just that the night was so perfect. Before he could explain, I said, "Yes.You did great."
"Night,Nikki."
The next morning,I found a note in my jacket pocket.I unfolded it and read two words, written in Jack's handwriting.
Ever Yours. — Brodi Ashton

I was a huge David Letterman fan, even going back to when he was on NBC. My parents would only let me watch a half hour of television a day, so I would record Letterman the night before and then watch it when I came home from school. That's what made me want to do a T.V. show. — Trevor Moore

Love. He recoiled from the very idea. He knew all about love: love was following his best friend around school like a lost puppy, putting up with all manner of shit just to be near him. Love was sobbing himself to sleep night after endless night because the guy who'd taken his virginity hadn't called him back. Love was a thousand shattered dreams and a flood of memories that made him cringe. Love could fuck off. — Kate Aaron

Playing the part of a charitable soul was only for those who were afraid of taking a stand in life. It is always far easier to have faith in your own goodness than to confront others and fight for your rights. It is always easier to hear an insult and not retaliate than have the courage to fight back against someone stronger than yourself; we can always say we're not hurt by the stones others throw at us, and it's only at night - when we're alone and our wife or our husband or our school friend is asleep - that we can silently grieve over our own cowardice. — Paulo Coelho

We could argue in front of our lockers all dramatically," I said. "That's something I saw a lot at human high schools."
He squeezed me in a quick hug. "Yes! Now that sounds like a good time. And then I could come to your house in the middle of the night and play music really loudly under your window until you took me back."
I chuckled. "You watch too many movies. Ooh, we could be lab partners!"
"Isn't that kind of what we were in Defense?"
"Yeah, but in normal high school, there would be more science, less kicking each other in the face."
"Nice. — Rachel Hawkins

Man, she was kissin' you like it was the last kiss of her life. If she kisses like that, I wonder how she--"
"Shut up, Enrique."
"She's gonna ruin you, Alejo," Enrique continues, calling me by my Spanish nickname. "Look at you already, spendin' time in jail last night and cuttin' school to get your motorcycle back. Granted, she's got a buena torta, but is she worth it?"
"I gottta get back to work," I say, my mind whirling with Enrique's words. And as I work under a Blazer for the remainder of the evening, all I want to do is make out with my mamacita again and again.
Yes, she's definitely worth it. — Simone Elkeles

Yeah, D-Wade called me up last night and said that he saw some film of me in high school and thinks that my form then was better and that I should shoot like that. I told him I'd think about it and then my pops called and said something like that so I decided to revert back and then ... — Shaquille O'Neal

Are you about done yet?Because this is all very impressive,but it's a school night and I've got homework to get back to. — Kiersten White

(Frances has gotten out of bed again and come to her parents' room ... )
'How can the wind have a job?' asked Frances.
'Everybody has a job,' said Father.
'I have to go to my office every morning at nine o'clock. That is my job. You have to go to sleep so you can be wide awake for school tomorrow. That is your job.'
Frances said, 'I know, but ... '
Father said, 'I have not finished. If the wind does not blow the curtains, he will be out of a job. If I do not go to the office, I will be out of a job. And if you do not go to sleep now, do you know what will happen to you?'
'I will be out of a job?' said Frances.
'No,' said Father.
'I will get a spanking?' said Frances.
'Right!' said Father.
'Good night!' said Frances, and she went back to her room. — Russell Hoban

When I die, she said, I am coming back as a tree with deep roots and I'll wave my leaves to the children every morning on their way to school & whisper tree songs at night in their dreams. Trees with deep roots know about the things that children need. — Brian Andreas

My mother - neither one of my parents went to college. My mother, after her four children had grown up, went back and got her high school equivalency degree at night, at Central High School in Providence, became a teacher's aide. — Tad Devine

Back in 1995, Munger had given a talk at Harvard Business School called "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment." If you wanted to predict how people would behave, Munger said, you only had to look at their incentives. FedEx couldn't get its night shift to finish on time; they tried everything to speed it up but nothing worked - until they stopped paying night shift workers by the hour and started to pay them by the shift. Xerox created a new, better machine only to have it sell less well than the inferior older ones - until they figured out the salesmen got a bigger commission for selling the older one. "Well, you can say, 'Everybody knows that,'" said Munger. "I think I've been in the top five percent of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther." Munger's — Michael Lewis

Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, 'I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr Raine.' Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course of that evening. Dr Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in his heart then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, 'Boy, take down your pants ... ' Well, well ... — William Makepeace Thackeray

And then he grins back, and I'm giddy and breathless and kind of unraveled. And I didn't sleep at all last night. Not even for a second. I've basically been picturing this moment for ten hours, and now that it's here, I don't have a clue what I'm supposed to say. Probably something awesome and witty and not school-related. Probably not: "Did you finish the chapter? — Becky Albertalli

Quietly Sophronia added, "And the soot on my dress, sir?"
"I didn't see anything." Professor Braithwope smiled down at her, showing a small hint of fang.
Sophronia grinned back. "I'm glad we understand each other, sir."
The vampire looked out into the night. "This is the right finishing school for you, isn't it, whot?"
"Yes sir, I think it might very well be."
"A piece of advice, Miss Temminnick?"
"Sir?"
"It is a great skill to have friends in low places. They, too, have things to teach you."
"Now, sir, I thought you didn't see any soot. — Gail Carriger

Because - all the way driving here, driving all night, Christmas lights on the motorway and I'm not ashamed to tell you, I got choked up - because I was thinking, couldn't help it, about the Bible story - ? you know, where the steward steals the widow's mite, but then the steward flees to far country and invests the mite wisely and brings back thousandfold cash to widow he stole from? And with joy she forgave him, and they killed the fatted calf, and made merry?" "I think that's maybe not all the same story." "Well - Bible school, Poland, it was a long time ago. — Donna Tartt

There's a note on the door: "Dear kind person, Please don't look for valuables here. We never had any. Use whatever you want, but don't trash the place. We'll be back." I saw signs on other houses in different colors - "Dear house, forgive us!" People said goodbye to their homes like they were people. Or they'd written: "we're leaving in the morning," or, "we're leaving at night," and they'd put the date and even the time. There were notes written on school notebook paper: "Don't beat the cat. Otherwise the rats will eat everything." And then in a child's handwriting: "Don't kill our Zhulka. She's a good cat." [Closes his eyes.] — Svetlana Alexievich

On game day, until five o'clock or so, the white desert light held off the essential Sunday gloom - autumn sinking into winter, loneliness of October dusk with school the next day - but there was always a long still moment toward the end of those football afternoons where the mood of the crowd turned and everything grew desolate and uncertain, onscreen and off, the sheet-metal glare off the patio glass fading to gold and then gray, long shadows and night falling into desert stillness, a sadness I couldn't shake off, a sense of silent people filing toward the stadium exits and cold rain falling in college towns back east. — Donna Tartt

By lunchtime, the rest of the school was still talking about last night's epic howler at Hell Hall, but Mal had no interest. The party was the past; she'd moved on. She had bigger things to worry about now. All she could think about was how her mother wanted the Dragon's Eye back. And how Maleficent wouldn't see her as anything other than her father's daughter - in other words, a pathetic, soft human - until Mal could prove her wrong. Mal kept reliving last night's conversation over and over, so that she missed her first few classes and sleepwalked through the rest. She arrived for her one-on-one after-school seminar with Lady — Melissa De La Cruz

If it makes you feel any better, he's been all sad doll lately too."
"What are you talking about, Chels?"
Chelsea stopped walking and stared at Violet.
"Jay. I'm talking about Jay, Vi. I thought you might want to know that you're not the only one who's hurting. He's been moping around school, making it hard to even look at him. He's messed up ... bad." Just like the other night in Violet's bedroom, something close to ... sympathy crossed Chelsea's face.
Violet wasn't sure how to respond.
Fortunately sympathetic Chelsea didn't stick around for long. She seemed to get a grip on herself, and like a switch had been flipped, the awkward moment was over and her friend was back, Chelsea-style: "I swear, every time I see him, I'm halfway afraid he's gonna start crying like a girl or ask to borrow a tampon or something. Seriously, Violet, it's disgusting. Really. Only you can make it stop. Please make it stop. — Kimberly Derting

As the wild mood rose in him, the need for rest would lessen even more in the coming days. All he wanted was to get through the school day and find his way back to the night. — Ryan Blacketter

Jenna reached over and held one of my hands, Kara held the other, and I felt like the universe was holding us all.
For that night, maybe just for that magic moment, it all seemed to make so much sense, like the thousand puzzle pieces of my life were all in place and I knew the How and Why of all things. It was one of those moments that I was sure would stay impressed on me forever because it was real and true. It was as tangible as the blanket beneath me. I felt lik I had touched something, something as big as the universe, and it had touched me back.
I didn't know that even a big moment like that could be snuffed out in a matter of days by packing to go home, by the wrong teacher on the wrong school schedule, or by my uncle getting his brains blown out at a traffic stop.
But all that just made Kara and Jenna brighter stars in my sky. I had no way of knowing that, in a matter of weeks, even those stars would be snuffed out. — Mary E. Pearson

I think the first time I really felt that I was Palestinian was a time when I was trying to go back to school with my father at night and there was a curfew for Palestinians. My father said, "I will walk first, but you have to understand, the police will not let me go, so keep moving and don't look at me and don't look back." — Rula Jebreal

When I went to college, I did clothing and textiles. It really wasn't until I moved to New York, my second night in, I did stand-up. I took a wild left turn, and instead of going back and finishing school at FIT, I started doing stand-up and acting. — Melissa McCarthy

Max was fascinated by the woman and more than a little curious about what she might be up to. Sarah Johnson had come from a two-parent, affluent home with a squeaky-clean past. She'd been the golden girl, high school cheerleader, valedictorian and had apparently glided through college without making a ripple, coming out with a bachelor of arts degree in literature. She'd married well, had six children and then one winter night, for some unknown reason, she'd driven her car into the Yellowstone River. Her body was never found. Because there were no skid marks on the highway, it had looked like a suicide. Foul play had never been suspected.
That was twenty-two years ago. Now she was back - with no memory of those years or why she'd apparently tried to take her own life.
Max wanted this story more than he wanted a hot cup of coffee this morning. — B. J. Daniels

And I was looking for escape routes all the time. Ways to not fully be there, to be distracted by other lives, the lives of people I knew from high school and college that were happening in different states and cities. I would waste hours comparing my life to theirs, sitting the two of them side by side and circling the things that seemed out of place in my own life, like the "What's Wrong?" pictures in the back of the Highlights magazines. I don't exactly know what happened that night after — Hannah Brencher

I immediately cotton on to the fact that intelligence thus lightly used, and one-upmanshipishly displayed, is a birthmark giving me a two-coloured face, is a goitre, a hump on the back, webbed toes, and makes me stink like the night-man. Once again I learn what I knew on my very first day at Kensington School, and have carelessly forgotten, that it is more intelligent to appear less intelligent. I henceforth rein myself in, and publicly give back only what I have been given - fifty-six for seven- eights. — Hal Porter

There is no place more hollow, more soulless, than a school at night. The building had been created for life, for constant motion, for students rushing back and forth, some confident, most scared, all trying to figure out their place in the world. Take that away and you might as well have a body drained of all its blood. — Harlan Coben

The idea of going back to basketball drills made her stomach tighten, but she stood up on her tiptoes and leaned into Jay, whispering against his cheek. "I got your note last night. Would've been better if I'd have found you in my bed instead."
Jay groaned and grabbed her by the shoulders. There was the hint of accusation buried behind his breathy chuckle as he set her away from him. "You're playing with fire, Vi. You shouldn't tease me at school. Besides, I think if I hid in your room, your father - check that, your mother - would skin me alive."
Violet heard the coach shouting her name, and she knew she'd be getting a demerit for slacking off. But she didn't care.
She flashed him her most wolfish smile. "Next time, you should totally take that chance. It could've been fun," she promised before sauntering away. — Kimberly Derting

When you compare Christmas to Hanukkah, there's no comparison. Christmas is great. Hanukkah sucks! First night you get socks. Second night, an eraser, a notebook. It's a Back-to-School holiday! — Lewis Black