Break From School Quotes & Sayings

EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him. As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it. And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up - through distance, differences, divorce, or death. — Mitch Albom

If she has her way ...

Willa Davis is wrangling puppies when Keane Winters stalks into her pet shop with frustration in his chocolate-brown eyes and a pink bedazzled cat carrier in his hand. He needs a kitty sitter, stat. But the last thing Willa needs is to rescue a guy who doesn't even remember her ...

He'll get nothing but coal in his stocking.

Saddled with his great-aunt's Feline from Hell, Keane is desperate to leave her in someone else's capable hands. But in spite of the fact that he's sure he's never seen the drop-dead-gorgeous pet shop owner before, she seems to be mad at him ...

Unless he tempers "naughty" with a special kind of nice ...

Willa can't deny that Keane's changed since high school: he's less arrogant, for one thing - but can she trust him not to break her heart again? It's time to throw a coin in the fountain, make a Christmas wish - and let the mistletoe do its work ... — Jill Shalvis

At primary school when people tried to find friends, I tried to find space that my imagination could fill with whatever it wanted, nearly always butterflies because to me they were perfection, like real-life fairies with prettier wings. At break time I turned myself into them, not just one butterfly but hundreds of them, my arms a kaleidoscope of colors as I danced across the wet grass while my class played tag, chasing around each other around the blacktop. I didn't understand it, like wasn't it too crowded I asked them all the time in my head. Don't you worry cherub, the lunch monitor said when she caught me watching the other children in confusion. You're Pluto. Happiest away from the heat of the action. She smiled a wrinkly smile. Nothing wrong with that. — Annabel Pitcher

As a school nurse, she had always modeled herself on Mary Poppins, aiming for an air of good-tempered calm, self-assurance, a tolerance for play, but an expectation that the medicine would go down along with the spoonful of sugar. If the kids thought it was possible she might break into song and shoot fireworks from the tip of her umbrella, that was all right with her. Such — Joe Hill

You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it's medical school or law school. — Michael Hastings

Meanwhile the doctor in Kaitaia had made known to the Education Dept the behaviour patterns of the Rusts in Te Hapua. The Dept always interfered in the private lives of teachers. Break up in marriage was not to be tolerated and an intervention of this authority forced the Rusts to report to Parawera School in the Waikato. — Theresa Sjoquist

feeling free never breaks the law but, you shall never be free when you break the law whilst feeling free! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I've never forgotten what it's like to be in your early twenties, which is not a particularly easy time. You've left your family, you've left the strictures of high school, and you're trying to break free and form yourself but you have to support yourself as well. We don't really give enough credence to that time of life and to its troubles. — Julia Leigh

The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rape - my word. The subsequent silencing and exile - misplaced shame - were the catalysts for me to finally break free of my mother's grasp and my voicelessness and do what I truly wanted, alone. I wished to prove myself as independent and valid and strong - to my mother, and to the world. I'd believed I had needed something huge and external that no one could deny was impressive, so I could show my family I was able - so they could finally know that I was strong.

Instead I had shown myself.

And it felt wonderful. — Aspen Matis

Music was fundamental in my family. Sang at bars, all the way to church on Sunday. Music in school, played guitar pulls at the house, go to other people's houses and break out the guitars, it was fun. It was always there, I've just been a part of it. — Jamey Johnson

I didn't mind staying home from school and medicating myself with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Being sick always gave me another chance to break an old-fashioned mercury thermometer, too. — Sam Kean

One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don't realise they're self-harming. The phrase 'self-harm' brings up thoughts of 'cutting', but that's only a small portion of it. When you drink excessively to drown your sorrows to the point you throw up and can't see straight and/or, like a girl at my school, ended up being driven to hospital to have her stomach pumped, you've brought harm to yourself. If you take drugs to feel numb and it becomes an addiction that you can't break, you've self-harmed. When you starve yourself or binge eat to fit the latest fashions, you're pushing your body further than it can go.
We need to start treating ourselves how we deserve to be treated, even if you feel that no one else does. Prove to the world you ARE worth something by treating yourself with the utmost respect and hope that other people will follow your example. And even if they don't, at least one person in the world is treating you well: YOU. — Carrie Hope Fletcher

There are at least two sets of Rules for Life, as far as I can tell. There are the ones that get you picked up by the cops or taken to the assistant principal's office if you break them: Don't leave school grounds, don't spray paint stop signs, don't drink, ,don't drop firecrackers in the toliets.
But there's a different set that you really can't break if you don't want your life to suck relentlessly. At the head of the list, Rule Number One: Don't get noticed. As long as you stay exactly the person everyone thinks you're supposed to be, you're fine. — Emma Bull

Of course, I'm not one to judge people by their appearances, Rhonda, but from how this guy looked I would have said he had graduated high school with three friends tops, all of them in the computer club with him, and that he had some super-obscure hobby he was obsessed with, like collecting ancient musical instruments or making origami rocket ships that could break the sound barrier, and that, if he noticed women at all, he tried to impress them with how many decimal places of pi he had memorized. — Rebecca Goldstein

Because the minister's wife refused to leave the minister, and because my mother required a worshipful companion, she was forced to break up with Fern and secure herself a new mate. As luck would have it, Dr. Finch had recently begun seeing a suicidal eighteen-year-old African-American girl who had taken a leave of absence from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her name was Dorothy. — Augusten Burroughs

Michael Faraday, the son of a Yorkshire blacksmith, was born in south London in 1791. He was self-educated, leaving school at fourteen to become an apprentice bookbinder. He engineered his own lucky break into the world of professional science after attending a lecture in London by the Cornish scientist Sir Humphry Davy in 1811. Faraday sent the notes he had taken at the lecture to Davy, who was so impressed by Faraday's diligent transcription that he appointed him his scientific assistant. Faraday went on to become a giant of nineteenth-century science, widely acknowledged to have been one of the greatest experimental physicists of all time. Davy is quoted as saying that Faraday was his greatest scientific discovery. — Brian Cox

The only way you can invent tomorrow is if you break out of the enclosure that the school system has provided for you by the exams written by people who are trained in another generation. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

But no, I'm sorry. I can't end there. I haven't yet said everything I want to say. A little girl is at school, out in the playground with her friends, and she sees a flower and says to her friends, just thinking out loud, wondering gently to herself: Do you think flowers have feelings? And for the rest of the day her friends tease her relentlessly, with every new opportunity that arises. Do flowers have feelings, that's so stupid. Right, flowers have feelings. All day and for the rest of the week: stupid flowers have stupid feelings and that little girl feels she is never going to say anything like that ever again. She has already learned that when you open your heart or express genuine, innocent curiosity or wonder about the world, your friends will pounce on the opportunity and use it to hurt you as viciously as possible and there is nothing anyone can do to protect her. It's simple stories like that that really break my heart. — Jacob Wren

I needed a break, and going to culinary school turned a lightbulb on that I didn't have to make music. The people in the music business forget that not only is there an entire world of people out there who do not care what we do, we are not creating the wheel. — Kelis

We were about a mile from school, on a path in the park, when Chirag reached down and took off his shoes, tossing them into the trees beside us.

"What are you doing?" I shouted in between breaths. Step, breath. Step, breath. He was a few yards ahead of me. I took advantage of his pause to pass him; I wasn't about to let him beat me.

"There's a tribe of Indians in Mexico who are the best runners in the world," he shouted. "They run barefoot for miles and miles and never break a sweat."

"You're not that kind of Indian," I shouted back, and Chirag laughed, his golden skin shimmering beneath his sweat.

"You should try it, too!"

"No way!" I replied without turning around to face him. "The ground is filthy. There could be glass or splinters or something."

"Aw, come on, Maisie," he cooed, coming up on my left side and getting a few steps ahead of me once more. "I dare you. — Alyssa B. Sheinmel

Sorry, I had to break the tension; it was making me uncomfortable. It reminded me a lot of some
of my dates in high school. Just before the guy copped a feel."
"Sorry," Kelsey said, her apology directed at Cole. "She doesn't interact with people very often. It's
... like a puppy that gets locked in the laundry room all day."
"Should I get her a treat?" he asked.
"Hey," Alexa said, her tone defensive. "Is the treat bacon?"
"Milk-Bone," he said.
"Then I'll pass and head to bed." She looped her arm through Kelsey's, and they turned, stepping
off the porch. — Maisey Yates

As a kid, I would do all of the plays at my school, and I was notorious for being in five numbers in one show. I'd go onstage, run backstage for a wardrobe change, and then go back out onstage. I'm always trying to do more than I should but when I got my lucky break (or whatever it's called), I was prepared because I studied and worked really hard for it. — Chrissie Fit

Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap, the coffee, the rice, to iron the pants, to braid the hair, to pull the day's water up from the well, to boil water for tea, to wash the children for school, to pull the vegetables and start the walk to market, to run to catch the bus for the work that is paid. I don't know when most women sleep. — Adrienne Rich

My favorite holiday memory was sitting at home all day in my pajamas during winter break for school watching a bunch of old Christmas movies like 'Jack Frost' and 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' with my siblings and parents. — Becky G

She called me Nerdy because I wore glasses and read books and ate yogurt on my lunch break. I'm not really a nerd: I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life. So I wear the name as a badge of honor. That someday I may not totally bore some really smart people. The question is: How do you find smart people? — Gillian Flynn

I always say, and I mean it, that the great break of my literary career was when I went to law school. — Scott Turow

They both got in their cars. Myron watched Erik drive off. Then he picked up the cell phone and hit Win's speed dial. "Articulate." "I need you to break into a house." "Goody. Please explain." "I found a path where I dropped Aimee off. It leads to another cul-de-sac." "Ah. Do we have a thought then about where she ended up?" "Sixteen Fernlake Court." "You sound fairly certain." "There's a car in the driveway. On the back windshield is a sticker. It's for teacher parking at Livingston High School." "On my way. — Harlan Coben

Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.' — Jeff Ament

I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs is a mind that sends and minds that receive. I shall teach my own students how to teach themselves. My own school. No buildings. Break out of the classroom prison. All I need is SKY. The Universe can be my classroom - the great vast world of the Concord countryside. — Henry David Thoreau

The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school. — Rick Riordan

I can't win with you. I can't win with you! You say you're done ... I'm fucking miserable over here! I had to break my phone into a million pieces to keep from calling you every minute of the damn day
I've had to play it off like everything is just fine at school so you can be happy ... and you're fucking mad at me? You broke my fuckin' heart! — Jamie McGuire

The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers 'someday.' When they are out of high school, when they've finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire ... That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' It all starts with the writing. — Robin Hobb

I've since come to understand the reason school lasts thirteen years. It takes that long to sufficiently break a child's will. It is not easy to disconnect children's wills, to disconnect them from their own experiences of the world in preparation for the lives of painful employment they will have to endure. — Derrick Jensen

I just remember when I came out of film school - and I loved film school - that the industry was such a mystery. How to break in, and once you are in, how to make a film; that is such a large undertaking. There are thousands of pitfalls. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

I've changed in my sympathies since I've become a mother myself. In high school I went through a period where I was close with my mom and had to break with her in order to find myself and come back. Since that was my experience, that's often what happens in my books. — Sarah Dessen

Now if you not only support them through that pregnancy, but now provide childcare for them so they can go back to school and get their GED or their associate's degree or bachelor's degree or their master's degree, learn how to take care of themselves, teach their baby how to take care of themselves so that you break the cycle of the dependency. — Benjamin Carson

Morbid, but not passive. "I was speaking at a film school in Hollywood, and I said to them, 'Go have a life. Live. Get laid, get into a bar fight. Get knifed in the fucking thorax. Lose all your money. Make all your money back. Jump into a train.' When I was just a child, I was observing the world, but I lived a lot, too. We used to break into abandoned houses. We explored the entire sewer system of Guadalajara on foot. And then I became really crazy as a teenager. — Guillermo Del Toro

Waking your kids up for school the first day after a break is almost as much fun as birthing them was. — Jenny McCarthy

Muriel, my mother, was my main confidant. She was a teacher of English at Watford grammar school but took a break while my sister Madeleine and I were children. She held court in the kitchen, and we talked about everything. — John Sulston

For me, it's all I've wanted to do. I did local plays and productions, local theater groups and anything that involved it. And then, I went and studied it, attended drama school and got my first lucky break in the theater in London, and just went from there. — Colin Morgan

Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships - the one-day variety or longer - these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of "school" to include family as the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents - and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 - we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. — John Taylor Gatto

The thing I love about soaps, and from what I know about this is its run in a very old school way, which I like, since I have been doing this entertainment thing for a long time. But I see that there are some new barriers that they can break. — Darius McCrary

I'd like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority. — John Lennon

I was inspired by movies like 'Jawbreaker'and 'Carrie' for the 'Break the Rules' video. I never went to prom when I was at school so this was kind of me living out my weird fantasy of what prom would be like in my head. I asked Rose McGowan to be in the video and I never ever thought she would say yes, but she did ... so she came to prom too ... And she trashed it. ;) — Charli XCX

When it comes to assessment, the traditional model of assessment is assessment for learning. What people like to talk about now is that the twenty-first-century model is assessment of learning. But if assessment is merely the way we are able to determine how much learning has occurred, then the ultimate goal is assessment as learning, where assessment occurs in real time and is the process by which people reflect on their own thinking and diagnose how they've changed. There are schools that do this. There's a remarkable school in New Hampshire that, for them, the thing that matters the most is that people who graduate from their school have seventeen specific habits of mind and work - everything from collaboration and leadership to curiosity and wonder. They've developed these really thoughtful behavioral rubrics that break down each of those habits by subskills. — Ken Robinson

When I first left drama school, I was too posh for the working-class parts and not posh enough for the upper-class roles. You know what England is like: the gradations of accent and how you're judged by them are still there. I discovered that to get a break you have to lie about where you're from. — Ben Chaplin

He grabbed my arm. "Wait. You're mad?"
I yanked my coat from his grip. "You know ... I don't even know why I'm surprised."
His eyebrows pulled in. "I can't win with you. I can't win with you! You say you're done ... I'm fucking miserable over here! I had to break my phone into a million pieces to keep from calling you every minute of the damn day-I've had to play it off like everything is just fine at school so you can be happy ... and you're fucking mad at me? You broke my fuckin' heart!" His last words echoed into the night. — Jamie McGuire

But there's more. When I was on my way to the event today, Carolyn texted me and told me that Steve and Eve got married over break. Six months after he broke up with me, and after he kept telling me he didn't see marriage in
his future! And did I tell you that he broke up with me at the school, during the Fitness Fun-a-Thon fundraising event
we worked at?" Her face grew reflective. "I was handing out bottled water when he asked me to go behind the hydration station so he could talk to me privately. The whole time, Eve kept staring at us from the finish line of the three-legged race.
She knew I was getting dumped before I did. — Linda Morris

I'm a 27-year-old freshman, and returning to college after a seven-year break from high school was by far the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. — Hannah Kearney

Not one thought entered my head that did not seem disloyal. I was ashamed, seeing their pride close up, as if for the first time, at how little I had accomplished, how much I had failed to do at St. Paul's. Somewhere in the last two years I had forgotten my mission. What had I done, I kept thinking, that was worthy of their faith? How had I helped my race? How had I prepared myself for a meaningful future? ... They were right: only a handful of us got this break. I wanted to shout at them that I had squandered it. Now that it's all over, hey, I'm not your girl! I couldn't do it. — Lorene Cary

I need a break after school," she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather stay home. At a friend's house you have to do the things other people want to do. I like hanging out with my mom after school because I can learn from her. She's been alive longer than me. We have thoughtful conversations. I like having conversations because they make people happy. — Susan Cain

It's always a kind of liberation to leave the classroom during a lesson, even just for a few minutes. As if you have managed to steal a little time for yourself, to take a break from reality — Sara Bergmark Elfgren

Harry and Ron slouched into the Great Hall in states of deepest gloom, Hermione behind them, wearing a well-you-did-break-school-rules sort of expression. — J.K. Rowling

Ladies first." I couldn't wait for this game to be over so I could teach her how to break properly. Images of her body pressed against mine, bending over the table, caused my jeans to get tighter.
"Your funeral," she sang and my lips turned up at her flash of confidence. Echo twirled her pool cue like a warrior going into battle, never once taking her eyes off the cue ball. She leaned over the table. I focused on her tight ass. My siren ate me alive with every movement. As she took aim, she no longer resembled the fragile girl at school, but a sniper.
The quick and thunderous cracking of balls caught me off guard. The balls fell into the pockets in such rapid succession, I lost count. Echo rounded the table, once again twirling the cue, studying the remaining balls like a four-star general would a map.
Damn - the girl knew how to play. — Katie McGarry

Happier'n young'uns bustin' outta school fer summer break! — K.D. Harp

Almost every damn school in the world gets out earlier for Christmas break than the school I go to. — J.D. Salinger

For too long, our society has shrugged off bullying by labeling it a 'rite of passage' and by asking students to simply 'get over it.' Those attitudes need to change. Every day, students are bullied into silence and are afraid to speak up. Let's break this silence and end school bullying. — Linda Sanchez

This kind of thing always amazed Ginny
people who just walked away from institutions. People who left school when they didn't see the point. Aunt Peg had done that. Ginny knew she never would. That either made her someone who worked hard and finished things, or someone who didn't have the guts to break away from the pack. Maybe both. — Maureen Johnson

I'd been an expert at taking beatings. Then I had a lucky break where I did a bully in, by total sheer luck ... One minute I was the mark, and with just one swift move, I put the big man in school down ... Once he was down, the whole atmosphere in the schoolyard changed. A huge cloud seemed to be lifted from me ... I'd never been aware the cloud was so large. — Keith Richards

I don't really know how dating works," Jared told her. "High school for me was mostly musical numbers. That's how it is in the States, you've seen the movies. Every time someone had an emotional dilemma or epiphany, they would burst into song, and we would all have to break out into perfectly choreographed dance sequences. It took a lot of intensive training. So many jazz squares, no time for love. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I finished high school, moved to Nashville for college, and set out to break into the music business. Every night when I called home with news of my experiences, my mom and dad would encourage me to keep taking those small steps. — Trisha Yearwood

I cast people from right around me. I was at my alma mater. It's special to have most of the graduate students in it [and] one professor, because I feel like in terms of this school, I was one of the few students lucky enough to break into the art industry or the contemporary art world. — Kalup Linzy

I cannot help but wonder whether, by continuing and expanding the school lunch program, we aren't witnessing, if not encouraging, the slow demise of yet another American tradition: the brown bag. Perhaps we are beholding yet another break in the chain that links child to home. — Charles Mathias

Women tend to break the network of friends they make, but it is a habit that men have learned. It is an approach to life that involves planning almost without thinking about it. And men sustain this. I came from a northern grammar school. I had a good education, but I didn't have a good network. — Pauline Neville-Jones

Fear of Trying New Things
High school is a time to figure out your interests. There are many clubs and groups that cover a wide variety of subjects. If you have social anxiety, however, you may be afraid of trying new things.
As we read earlier, many people with social anxiety are perfectionists. When you try something new, there is always a possibility that you won't be good at it. It is much safer to stick with what you know and avoid the possibility that you might fail or embarrass yourself in front of others.
In the future, however, you may regret not taking part in more activities. You may be upset that you did not take advantage of opportunities. Avoiding new activities now creates a pattern of avoidance that can be difficult to break. — Heather Moehn

When I was a child and heard about angels, I was both frightened and fascinated by the thought of these enormous, invisible presences in our midst. I conceived of them not as white-robed androgynes with yellow locks and thick gold wings, which was how my friend Matty Wilson had described them to me
Matty was the predecessor of all sorts of arcane knowledge
but as big, dark, blundering men, massive in their weightlessness, given to pranks and ponderous play, who might knock you over, or break you in half, without meaning to. When a child from Miss Molyneaux's infant school in Carrickdrum fell under the hoofs of a dray-horse one day and was trampled to death, I, a watchful six year old, knew who was to blame; I pictured his guardian angel standing over the child's crushed form with his big hands helplessly extended, not sure whether to be contrite or to laugh. — John Banville

I'd nursed a crush on Conrad for whole school years. I could survive for months, years, on a crush. It was like food. It could sustain me. If Conrad was mine, there was no way I'd break up with him over a summer-or a school year, for that matter. — Jenny Han

In high school, we studied a lot of poetical forms. I was really interested in the math that was involved and the strange live break ups. That gave me a great amount of respect for a rhymed stanza. — Joanna Newsom

I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can't break this window. I can't even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone at risk. I won't let myself do that.
I'm not selfish like Lily.
I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I pres so heard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I'm hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control. — Courtney Summers

I hope she doesn't break up with Dane. He's the hottest guy in school and he's nice. That means you both have the hottest, nicest guys in school and in town. This means good things for my future because I'm up next. — Kristen Ashley

As became a young sinner, Sam [Mark Twain] had a special interest in Satan. He asked his Sunday school teacher questions about Eve in the garden, wondering "if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber." Twain recalled, "He did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and comprehension. — Fred Kaplan

I have been skiing since I was in school, but I'm not great. I am never going to break an Olympic record, I just want to go down the hills, on red or blue runs, but not ... black. — Alexander McQueen

It became clear to me that they expected children to submit to the school system and sacrifice their own interests, even if that would break their spirit. I — Jan Hunt

I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't. — Simon McBurney

It was spring break, so the theater was always packed with high schools students. It was an animal house. I wanted to burn the place down. — Haruki Murakami

I drive him to school, then I break back into Barron's house. I'm the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he's stolen.
Then I go home and shave until my skin is as slick as any slickster's. — Holly Black

She's dating the school quarterback."
"People date all the time. And they break up all the time."
"Not these two," Meredith said with a snort. "Their love is epic. Everyone at school knows it. He gave up his philandering ways to be with his longtime childhood bestie."
I finally glanced at her sideways. "They're in high school. High schoolers don't philander."
"Jack Caputo does. Or did. — Brodi Ashton

That was really so upsetting when you are trying to pass on some very serious knowledge and be basically, treated worse than a student coming off the street because his father pays the tuition. Come on. Give me a break. This is no school. This is a joke. — Miroslav Vitous

She never came back after mid-term break; according to the Automator, 'unforeseen circumstances' had forced her to extend her holiday. Every day Howard sees her classes trooping despondently from the Geography Room to the study hall, or carrying votive bundles of cardboard and paper to the recycling bins, their faces anxious, hopeful, like Indians doing a rain dance. He knows how they feel. Since mid-term he's existed in a constant state of tension, braced against every moment as the one that might finally restore her. Even out of school, even on his own, shopping in the supermarket, sitting at the traffic lights, he finds himself holding his breath. But the days are a series of ghost pregnancies, delivering nothing. — Paul Murray

Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there's this life we're struggling through full of shouting and tears and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck
it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. — Muriel Barbery

Too many people, once they reach a comfortable position in life, forget the important role writers like Hammett - who dropped out of high school in his first year to work supporting his family - or Howard - struggling to break into the pulps with absolutely no professional advice and little encouragement - play in literature, just as they tend to ignore the role the working man and woman play in society. — Don Herron

I was in school for literature, and read so many 19th century and early 20th century novels that it was hard to break out of that and read an average Jeanette Winterson book or something. — Colin Meloy

I knew," he murmurs. I can hear him over the music only because he says it right in my ear. "Right after we talked in the mall, I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That you were going to be the first girl to break my heart."
My breath catches. I force the smile now. "I haven't broken anything yet, right?"
"You will. Someday. But everybody breaks everything. For now we're fantastic. It's just, the better we get, the harder I realize the fall will be. — Michelle Painchaud

I decided that every rule in the Hills Village Middle School Code of Conduct should be worth a certain number of points, depending on how hard it was to break. Of course, this meant I could get into some serious trouble, so I decided to make that worth a bunch of points too. — James Patterson