Grader Quotes & Sayings

Didn't care if I wasn't paid for working after school for seven months teaching a 9th grader to read, but when he finally could, priceless! The best times in my life were when I went way beyond my paygrade to service students in need. — Ace Antonio Hall

Some people blamed his oddities on his dyslexia, which was so severe that one giddy pediatrician called it a gift: While he might never learn how to spell or read better than the average fourth grader, he'd always see things the rest of us couldn't. — Jim Lynch

I came to Houston for a job, the reason most people move halfway across the country with a first grader and a five-week-old. I came here to teach at Rice. — Justin Cronin

For a long time, I was more involved in basketball, baseball and golf. My parents didn't push me into football when I was a little kid, but they coaxed me into trying it as a 10th grader. — Marc Bulger

Let me give you some advice: make friends with a millionaire when he's a friendless sixth-grader. — Robin Sloan

People say that rape is not sex, that it's violence," Lucy says, bitterly. "But it's also sex. You can't get around that," she says. "he didn't run me over with a car. He had sex with me. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to have sex with an eighth-grader. You're not supposed to have sex when you're in eighth grade. It was very intimate. You can't get around it. This part of the body," she says, gesturing from her heart to her lower abdomen, though I understand she means to indicate her vagina. "If you're sitting around with a group of women, talking about various traumas, someone will say, I got beaten by my mother. But if you say, I got raped, it's a different thing."
I wonder if that is true. Is rape really the worst sort of violation? I'm not sure. I often wonder why it matters whether we're penetrated or not. There is the pain, but the pain doesn't last. The shame does. (216) — Jessica Stern

My name is George Smoot III, and I am smarter than a fifth-grader. — George Smoot

Someone's an easy grader."
"Someone just has a soft spot where you are concerned." He was leaning down towards me and even though his face was a good foot away from me, I swear I felt those words like he'd whispered them into my ear. — Cora Carmack

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria. — Rick Riordan

Life begins at six
at least in the minds of six-year-olds ... In kindergarten you are the baby. In first grade you put down the baby ... Every first grader knows in some osmotic way that this is real life ... First grade is the first step on the way to a place in the grown-up world. — Stella Chess

They'd moved behind the tree where I wouldn't have seen them unless I'd been looking for them (which I was). I almost pointed them out to Tammy, then decided against it. I didn't want to sound like a fifth grader: Wow, kissing! — Jennifer Echols

I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process. — Gerry Spence

Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again. — David Sedaris

I've gone to school with the same kids since kindergarten. And they knew what I was long before I did. I was uncool by FOURTH GRADE. How is it even possible to be an uncool fourth grader? Didn't we all just string together friendship bracelets and daydream about horses and pretend to solve mysteries back then? — Leila Sales

So you want to tell me what a sixth grader was doing in the eighth-grade side of the locker room, in a eighth-grade fight?" he said.
"Winning," I said. — Gary D. Schmidt

A third-grader when WWII started, I was also waging my own "war effort." It was deeply magical thinking - I really thought what I did or didn't do could save lives, win battles, bring my dad and uncles home safe. And conversely, that if I screwed up, they were all in greater danger. — Ann Medlock

The Supreme Being I would sign up for would not prove his omnipotence by saving one life while ending dozens, or hundreds, or thousands. Nor would he summon an angel to heaven by ending a first grader's life at the hands of a gunman or sadist. — Jeff Greenfield

So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really. — Haruki Murakami

I knew from Brianna that being beautiful wasn't all great. Brianna had changed in middle school. One day we were both seventh graders and the next, she was a supermodel who had a seventh grader for a best friend. — Elizabeth Scott

Hi there ... Let me ask you a question ... How would you find a needle in a haystack?"
The first-grader pauses, pensive, tugging on the green yarn around her neck. She's really thinking this over. Tiny gears are turning; she's twisting her fingers together, pondering. It's cute. Finally she looks up and says gravely, "I would ask the hays to find it."
...
Yes, of course. She's a genius!
...
It's so simple. Of course, of course. The first-grader is right. It's easy to find a needle in a haystack! Ask the hays to find it! — Robin Sloan

She is a cat with a burning tail, an ant under a microscope, a fly about to lose its wings to the curious plucking fingers of a third-grader on a rainy day, a game for bored children with no bodies and the whole universe at their feet. — Stephen King

It changed my life," the first-grader said of the iPad. "I'm reading everything on the street." To prove his point, he read all the words on a pizza box he cradled on his lap. — Anonymous

When I was in the 12th grade, I got my girlfriend pregnant. I just got out of school, she was a 10th-grader. I'm a teen parent, and I'm at a point where I'm like, 'Man I've got to do something.' — Ice-T

the entering seminarian today has the faculties of a sixth- to eighth-grader sixty years ago, and the seminary curriculum cannot make this seminarian an adult by the time he graduates. — T. David Gordon

In the eighth American-educational grade, Bruce Green fell dreadfully in love with a classmate who had the unlikely name of Mildred Bonk. The name was unlikely because if ever an eighth-grader looked like a Daphne Christianson or a Kimberly St.-Simone or something like that, it was Mildred Bonk. — David Foster Wallace

There's 4,000-plus stocks out there, and sometimes it gets a little confusing. And we like them to start with the portfolio grader, but if they'd like to see how I use the system and pick stocks - we offer that as well. — Louis Navellier

I've had people accuse me of being too tough of a grader. But my job is to paint reality versus telling people what they want to hear. — Steve Burke

As a 9th grader, I competed with the high school kids and out of 600 people, I finished 10th. — Bo Jackson

I told Grant Hill back there. I just got done playing against him, But as a second grader I had a Pistons Grant Hill jersey, That was the first time I walked into a gym. And that's when I fell in love with the game ... My mom, I think she just wanted to get me and my brother out of the house for a couple hours. But, when I walked into the gym I fell in love with the game. — Kevin Durant

I doubt trees are ever told to 'be the screwed-up ninth-grader.' — Laurie Halse Anderson

So as a seventh grader, no, you weren't friends with people you didn't like. But sometimes you also weren't friends with people you did like, which was complicated, and which didn't make any sense if you tried to explain it. Sometimes things just changed. That's where the sadness came in. — Lauren Myracle

Madeline displayed the bright sadder-but-wiser outlook of an alert first grader who'd discovered the alphabet in a school where Ecclesiastes is the primer - life is futility, a deeply terrible experience, but the really serious thing is reading. — Philip Roth

That's why signing kids up for piano lessons or sports is so important. It has nothing to do with creating a good musician or a five-year-old soccer star," said Heatherton. "When you learn to force yourself to practice for an hour or run fifteen laps, you start building self-regulatory strength. A five-year-old who can follow the ball for ten minutes becomes a sixth grader who can start his homework on time."5.13 — Anonymous

If I have a talent for making some fourth-grader who hates school and reading to hate it a little less, then I have to do the most with what I've been issued. — Brian P. Cleary

Prior to being bullied, I was a very footloose sixth-grader. You know, I was quirky, I was creative - I really felt good in my own body. And when I was bullied in seventh grade, my self-esteem tanked. — Carolyn Mackler

In fifth grade, I did 'Oklahoma!,' but I didn't get a leading role. I knew the whole play and could sing it already, but they were like, 'The sixth-grader has to get the lead.' I was really discouraged. — Ansel Elgort

The Bible looks the way it does because "God lets his children tell the story," so to speak. Children see the world from their limited gaze. A second grader might give a class presentation on what mom does all day. She will talk about her mom from her point of view, rooted in love and devotion. She'll filter - unconsciously and in an age-appropriate manner - her mother's day through how she perceives her family and her role in the family. She'll get some things more or less correct, but she will also misunderstand other things, and get still other things plain wrong. — Peter Enns

I distinctly remember being a fifth-grader and lying in bed at three a.m. thinking, I am the only kid awake in the world. The insomnia feeds the anxiety, the anxiety feeds the insomnia, and my night would become a human centipede of sleeplessness. — Mamrie Hart

I'm still very connected to my family, to the world I grew up in. I understand what it means to be afraid that you can't pay a doctor's bill. Or to have to make the choice between buying a band uniform for a seventh-grader and making the insurance payment on time. That will never leave me. It was how I lived until I was well into my adult years. — Elizabeth Warren

If you're prepared to invest in a company, then you ought to be able to explain why in simple language that a fifth grader could understand, and quickly enough so the fifth grader won't get bored. — Peter Lynch

I dress and eat like a fifth-grader, basically. I like sandwiches and cereal and hooded sweatshirts. — Peter Dinklage

Make me proud my little first-grader" he said, fist pumping robbie "and, remember rule number one above all"
"Right" he replies "don't talk politics — Jenny B. Jones

Real education is about genuine understanding and the ability to figure things out on your own; not about making sure every 7th grader has memorized all the facts some bureaucrats have put in the 7th grade curriculum. — Aaron Swartz

He scanned the page looking for an entry that read, "Help! I'm Almost Thirteen Years Old and I Still Have the Muscles of a Third-Grader!" but apparently Robert's condition was so freakish and rare, the authors of the book didn't even bother to include it. — Charles Gilman

I did not work out while I was pregnant. I felt like I was having symptoms of a heart attack every time I worked out, so I enjoyed eating like a third grader and gained 55 pounds! — Diane Farr

But the player librarians all over the country were raving about most was Marjory Muldauer from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. A gangly seventh grader, a foot taller than any of her competitors, Marjory Muldauer had memorized the ten categories of the Dewey decimal system before she entered preschool. — Chris Grabenstein

Young adult novels don't shy away from the discussion of weight issues, and 'Blubber,' the tale of an overweight, not-so-sympathetic fifth-grader bullied by her peers, is a refreshing take. — Jami Attenberg

How soon do you want to move in?" "As soon as possible after school is out. In about six or seven weeks." "Are you a teacher too?" AJ asked. Shelby shook her head. "I have a first grader. And a three-year-old." "You're married?" As AJ's brown eyes flitted to her left hand, she self-consciously folded it into her waist. It'd been over a year since Gary's death, but she still wore her wedding band. More for her daughters' sakes than her own. "I was. — Johnnie Alexander

So I was ugly. I was never fat, really, and I never wore headgear or had zits or anything. But I was ugly. I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided - maybe there's like a secret cabal of boys who meet in the locker room and decide who's ugly and who's hot, because as far as I can remember, there was no such thing as a hot fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells — John Green

A tenth of Dostoyevsky is plenty for a seventh grader, I think. — Cathleen Schine

The ocean is the last frontier of human empirical knowledge; even the contours on that eighth-grader's globe are the product of a mix of scientific measurement, inference and conjecture. — Alan Huffman

And I remember as a second or third grader having some autonomy to go to the store if I felt like it, walk home, take my time, kick the can. We were on our own schedule after school, so that was cool. — Stone Gossard

A five-year-old who can follow the ball for ten minutes becomes a sixth grader who can start his homework on time. — Charles Duhigg

Turkle recounts the story of Marcia, a tenth grader she interviewed about Sim City. Marcia had developed a set of guidelines for playing the game, including this one: "Raising taxes always leads to riots."46 Turkle worries gravely about Marcia's inability to conceive of a simulation in which the rules would differ, in which, for example, "increased taxes led to increased productivity and social harmony."" Turkle calls for a new kind of literacy that would teach Marcia and her peers how to develop a reading competency of simulation. — Ian Bogost

It's the scariest thing in the world, going to acting class, because first of all, there's a lot of pressure. I just go back to being that fourth grader who couldn't, like, sit still in her seat. — Eva Mendes

He who could write so easily, who could spend a thousand words down along his plunging fingers on the green-rubber keyboard of his machine, had stumbled like a first-grader over this single paragraph. A dozen times he had begun it and written into it a naked desperation; a dozen times he had begun it and written into it the frosted mathematics of logic. Finally he'd written out quickly the sentences that kept cropping up in all the versions. Those must be, to whatever censor there was in him, the most acceptable ones. He sealed it without rereading it and went out to mail it. An hour later he despised himself for having sent it. — Laura Z. Hobson

I always think, what type of 11th grader would I be if I was still at school? Or if I was home all the time, would I be at the gym 24/7? Would I be as good at guitar? I know I wouldn't be as mature as I am. — Shawn Mendes

I had my two front teeth knocked out by a sixth grader in first grade. — Chad Michael Murray

I was a strange, dark little dude. I fell in love with horror movies, at a very early age. Somehow, as a first grader, I was able to convince my parents to let me go see stuff like 'An American Werewolf in London' in theaters, so I was headed in that direction anyway. — James Roday

Every phrase had to be captured on paper or it wasn't real, it slipped away. I'd see the words hanging in midair
Camille, pass the milk
and anxiety coiled up in me as they began to fade, like jet exhaust. Writing them down, though, I had them. No worries that they'd become extinct. I was a lingual conservationist. I was the class freak, a tight, nervous eighth-grader frenziedly copying down phrases ("Mr. Feeney is totally gay," "Jamie Dobson is ugly," "They never have chocolate milk") with a keenness bordering on the religious. — Gillian Flynn

What are you?
I opened my eyes gingerly. The flashlight that had blinded me was lying a few feet from my head now, which gave me just enough light to see what appeared to be a twelve-year-old girl sitting on my chest.
I'd gotten my butt handed to me by a sixth grader? That was embarrassing. — Rachel Hawkins

Ophelia was bonkers, right? And Juliet was what, a sixth-grader? — Rainbow Rowell

Mary sat, quiet and attentive and blank. It wasn't like talking to a dumb seventh-grader, it was like talking to a pancake. — Robert B. Parker

The first 'Saturday Night Live' season I was heavily interested in was the one with Martin Short, Billy Crystal, and Christopher Guest. There was just something about Martin Short in particular. I really related to him and hung on his every word and mannerism, so I started impersonating all of his characters as an 8th grader. — Andy Daly

I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time! — Sandra Cisneros

such as first-grader Vladimir's sporting a wristwatch, — Masha Gessen

Aren't you a little old for your mom to be picking out your clothes for you? Really? Shopping at the Children's Place at your age? I'm sure there's some third-grader dying to know who bought the last navy I-sore shirt. (Nekoda) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I've tried to start my kids on 'Doctor Who,' but they're just not there yet. Someone had given me these TARDIS stick-em notes, so I gave them to Tucker, and he finally put them all over his locker. I'm like, 'You're the coolest fifth grader, ever!' — Kristian Bush