School Began Quotes & Sayings

Saudi Arabia, and began having children, Osama bin Laden completed his high school education at the Al-Thager — Jean Sasson

Grandma smiled brightly. "How lovely! It seems your whore has arrived."
Jake groaned and covered his face with his hands. There was no way out of it. His grandmother was going to get him shot.
A&E women scorned, here I come.
"Excuse me?" Aileen put her hands on her hips and did a weird head nod at Grandma, and nearly teetered off her high heels. Oh, this wasn't good. Not good at all.
Grandma reached out and patted Aileen's arm. "Sweetheart, I'm the one with hearing aids, not you. I called you a whore. Would you like me to spell it for you, too?" She nudged Jake. "What did you do? Find her at a high school career fair?" And then in a horrifyingly loud voice she began spelling. "W-H-O-R-E. — Rachel Van Dyken

In high school, I began to dig my way into Ethiopian history, and began to understand myself as a young man formed by multiple narratives. — Dinaw Mengestu

Michaela began loudly putting her stuff away - in the way the women do when they want you to say, "Oh, don't put your stuff away." I wasn't going to fall for that one; they teach you that on your first day of womanizing school. — Anonymous

I began drawing when I was nearly 3, and after finishing the sixth grade, I left school to paint and was tutored at home. My father didn't think a formal education was necessary for a painter. — Jamie Wyeth

[Eric]Goldman [a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law] says back in the 1990s, courts began to confront the question of whether software code is a form of speech. Goldman says the answer to that question came in a case called Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice. Student Daniel Bernstein who created an encryption software called Snuffle. He wanted to put it on the Internet. The government tried to prevent him, using a law meant to stop the export of firearms and munitions. Goldman says the student argued his code was a form of speech. — Laura Sydell

As Melissa got closer, the taste of school began to foul her mouth. — Scott Westerfeld

When I was young, I wanted to be a movie star. But I realized that you have no control being an actor. So I went to architecture school in NYC, because I was crazy about buildings. Then I began to realize that I got more excited about Vogue coming out each month than I was about my projects. — Tom Ford

I began graduate school in the late 1980s, and my goal was to understand how morality varied across cultures and nations. I did some research comparing moral judgment in India and the U.S.A. — Jonathan Haidt

That year, and every year, it seemed, we began by studying the Revolutionary War. We were taken in school buses on field trips to visit Plymouth Rock, and to walk the Freedom Trail, and to climb to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument. We made dioramas out of colored construction paper depicting George Washington crossing the choppy waters of the Delaware River, and we made puppets of King George wearing white tights and a black bow in his hair. During tests we were given blank maps of the thirteen colonies, and asked to fill in names, dates, capitals. I could do it with my eyes closed. — Jhumpa Lahiri

I was quite keen on silviculture, the growing of trees, and that was something I gave a lot of thought to. Maybe I could've gone in that direction. But it just so happened that while I was trying to make up my mind, I enrolled in art school, and there I began to develop my interest in music, parallel with my interest in the visual arts. — Ian Anderson

I prayed to dispel my fear, until suddenly, and I do not know how the idea came to me, I began to pray for others. I prayed for everyone who came into my thoughts - - people with whom I had traveled, those who had been in prison with me, my school friends of years ago. I do not know how long I continued my prayer, but this I do know - - my fear was gone! Interceding for others had released me! — Corrie Ten Boom

Are you often struck, when you become sufficiently intimate with other people to know something of their development, how late their lives begin so to speak? I mean these men you meet who seem to have read everything, done everything, and yet they were pure barbarians until they left school, and had turned twenty perhaps before they began to be interested in the things that interest them now? — C.S. Lewis

But I knew the way the people in the town thought about things. They always had some time left over from their life to bother about other people and what they did. They thought they had to get together to help other people out, like the time they got together about the woman who let a colored man borrow her car and told her the best place for her was up north with all the other nigger lovers, and the time they got the veterans with overseas wives out. If you were different from anybody in town, you had to get out. That's why everybody was so much alike. The way they talked, what they did, what they liked, what they hated. If somebody got to hate something and he was the right person, everybody had to hate it too, or people began to hate the ones who didn't hate it. They used to tell us in school to think for yourself, but you couldn't do that in the town. You had to think what your father thought all his life, and that was what everybody thought. — John Kennedy Toole

My acting career began when I walked into a drama school class run by Anna Scher in Islington. Anna discovered a lot of people: Linda Robson, Pauline Quirke, Gary and Martin Kemp, and Dexter Fletcher were among my contemporaries. — Phil Daniels

of Weedpatch Camp were working in the fields. Perhaps as many as fifty children were playing baseball at the school or swimming in the pool when three cars driven by teenage boys began to circle the playground. The teenage boys got out of the cars and squared off in front of Eddie and a line of other sixteen-year-old boys from the camp. When the intruders hurled rocks into the swimming pool, the Okie boys charged forward and the Fight was on. Some men from the camp rushed over to the playground to restore order, but by then the invaders were in retreat with bloody noses and scuffed faces. That — Jerry Stanley

It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky. — James Baldwin

You know, bullying," her mother began. "I see it every day. Kids get bullied at school, they get cyber bullied, text bullied, Myface bullied."
"Oh, God!" Arista groaned. "It's My Space or Facebook. Not Myface. — Dianne F. Gray

My education began in theater school, and it continues to this day. I just continued learning to be a better performer. — Nick Offerman

The dedication had been anticipated nationwide. Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth's Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands ... — Erik Larson

When psychotherapy began, it was about the practitioner listening to a patient and interpreting what the patient said, in order to afford the patient insights about his or her psyche. But now we understand that the main curative part of psychotherapy is the relationship itself. It appears not to be relevant which psychology school the practitioner belongs to. What matters is the quality of the relationship and the practitioner's belief in what he or she is offering. — Philippa Perry

Without electronics to help me through my miserable life, I decided that I'd start working out. It would be great. My dad has a weight room in the basement that he doesn't really use anymore, so I could lift down there. I began fantasizing about becoming huge and having girls all over me, which helped me through the rest of the evening, but of course I never actually got to lifting. All I did was lie down and dream, until school bitch slapped me into consciousness the following morning." - Michael — Ryan Hill

While I was in high school, I discovered and began writing science fiction. — Laurence Yep

Tracking in elementary school was a uniquely American policy. The sorting began at a very young age, and it came in the form of magnet schools, honors classes, Advanced Placement courses, or International Baccalaureate programs. In fact, the United States was one of the few countries where schools not only divided younger children by ability, but actually taught different content to the more advanced track. In other countries, including Germany and Singapore, all kids were meant to learn the same challenging core content; the most advanced kids just went deeper into the material. — Amanda Ripley

When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system. — Rudy Giuliani

At age sixty-one, Donovan is just a year younger than the president. The two have known each other since they were classmates at Columbia Law School. But there the similarities end. Roosevelt is a liberal while Donovan is a staunch conservative Republican. Roosevelt is in failing health; Donovan is so robust and larger-than-life that he seems bulletproof. And while Roosevelt is happiest basking in the adulation of a large crowd, the swaggering Donovan prefers to work in the shadows. Even before the war began, Roosevelt brought in this quick-thinking former attorney and Medal of Honor2 winner to be his global eyes and ears - and Donovan has done a spectacular job. — Bill O'Reilly

I began seriously concentrating on music study after I entered senior high school. I went to a class in the arts section at the YMCA and learned music theory and composition. Today, there are many classes like this available, but this was not so much the case in those days. — Isao Tomita

Glenn Hammond Curtiss was a bicycle enthusiast before he started building motorcycles. Although he only attended grammar school to the 8th grade, his interests motivated him to move on to greater things. In 1904, as a self-taught engineer, he began to manufacture engines for airships. During this time, Curtiss became known for having won a number of international air races and for making the first long-distance flight in the United States. On September 30, 1907, Curtiss was invited to join a non-profit pioneering research program named the "Aerial Experimental Association," founded under the leadership of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, to develop flying machines. The organization was established having a fixed time period, which ended in March of 1909. During this time, the members produced several different aircraft in a cooperative, rather than a competitive, spirit. — Hank Bracker

I liked science very much. A science teacher in high school inspired me, and because of him, I began studying science at the university. But when I got there ... well, the subject still attracted me a lot, but I had to do all these exams, and it was just like working in an office. I couldn't stand that. — Theo Jansen

When I first began visiting West Germany in the early 1980s, I was startled by the contrast between Birmingham, where I went to school, and affluent Cologne. My host family, the lovely Schumachers, always had an opulent array of grapes on the table; they were better dressed than anyone I knew in Britain. — Luke Harding

My education began in the public schools of Wilmington. During most of these years, from about age 10, I also worked at some job or other after school, on weekends, and in the summer months. — Daniel Nathans

I started my career as a journalist, writing about science and technology for 'Business Week' magazine. Then I decided to make a career shift. I went to graduate school in computer science, and I began developing educational technologies - in particular, technologies to engage children in creative learning experiences. — Mitchel Resnick

For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. The discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little low-lying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim. — Oscar Wilde

The Iran-Iraq war began the same year that I went to primary school, at the age of six. — Hassan Blasim

I began to see the magic of Jocelyn's horse psychology school. You couldn't put on airs with a horse, as we so often do with people. Horses look through the masks we wear and the things we say. They see who we really are. They gauge our intentions in a thousand invisible ways that have nothing to do with the words we say. They shy away from the barriers of fear, self-centeredness, jealousy, anger, impatience. They are drawn in by kindness, understanding, concern, openness, love.

The thing is, so are people. — Lisa Wingate

Being a student in an art & design school, that was the moment for me, that was when I began to develop a lot of self-confidence and really come into my own. — Tim Gunn

Except for that stuff about the barnacle peckers that was some of the boringest shit I've heard since school got out." I couldn't even look at him. "Cheer up," he said. "I brought some real entertainment." He pulled a brittle copy of The Godfather from his backpack and started reading some scene that began on page twenty-seven - he knew the sexy page numbers by heart - in which some imaginary woman described how big this imaginary Sonny was to — Jim Lynch

In May 2012 - a year after the Arab awakening erupted - the United States made two financial commitments to the Arab world that each began with the numbers 1 and 3. The U.S. gave Egypt's military regime $1.3 billion worth of tanks and fighter jets. It also gave Lebanese public school students a $13.5 million merit-based college scholarship program, putting 117 Lebanese kids through local American-style colleges that promote tolerance, gender and social equality, and critical thinking. Having visited both countries at that time, I noted in a column that the $13.5 million in full scholarships bought the Lebanese more capacity and America more friendship and stability than the $1.3 billion in tanks and fighter jets ever would. So how about we stop being stupid? — Thomas L. Friedman

Until that rainy Sunday at the movies 31 years ago, for me, companionship had been a mandate for life's good times. After Orca, it became a choice. My trip to the theater helped me to distinguish between loneliness (experienced by default), and solitude (choosing when and how to enjoy my own company), as I began a journey of engaging the world on my own terms. Over the years, that journey deepened as I traveled life's roads with increasing independence and confidence, whether I was attending graduate school at night while working during the day, buying my first house or changing careers. — Gina Greenlee

When I was a teenager, I began to settle into school because I'd discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater. — Morgan Freeman

As I ate she began the first of what we later called "my lessons in living." She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations. — Maya Angelou

I have actually been sporty right from my childhood. I was quite chubby in the first eight years of my life. But then I began playing volleyball in school. That did it. I lost all my baby fat and became slim. — Shilpa Shetty

When we were lovers in high school," he began and she knew who he meant by we, "it was my job to undress him many nights, but his clothes must be folded neatly, precisely, reverently, and then placed on a chair. No mess, no wrinkles. But he ... he would strip me naked and drop all my clothes onto the floor. Then he'd walk on them. Not barefoot, either. With his shoes on most of the time. And you know what?" Kingsley asked as he stepped closer to her, close enough she could kiss him if she wanted to. "What?" "I worshipped him for it." Kingsley smiled at her, a Mona Lisa smile that hinted of secrets but didn't reveal them. — Tiffany Reisz

I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I took many courses outside the law school, and every semester, the students had a literature reading group. I was asked to lead one on 'Dante and the Concept of Justice,' and it was around that time that I began writing the novel. — Matthew Pearl

Where do you plan to live now that you're done with school?" Isabelle asked before Emma even had a chance to swallow. "Isabelle, enough," Ethan said as he rested his hands on Emma's shoulders. Isabelle's eyes flickered between the two of them, a muscle twitched in her cheek as her jaw clenched. "It's not the Spanish Inquisition." "Sorry," Isabelle said to Emma. "Its ok," Emma assured her. "It's just that Ethan doesn't bring many girls around, in fact I've never met a girlfriend of his; we were actually beginning to wonder if he even liked girls." "Isabelle!" Ethan hissed as Stefan choked on his drink and began to laugh loudly. — Brenda K. Davies

Although, since days when we had been at school together, I had been seeing him on and off - very much on and off - for more than twenty years by this time, I found when I worked under him there were still comparatively unfamiliar sides to Widmerpool. Like most persons viewed through the eyes of a subordinate, his nature was to be appreciated with keener insight from below. This new angle of observation revealed, for example, how difficult he was to work with, particularly on account of a secretiveness that derived from perpetual fear, almost obsession, that tasks completed by himself might be attributed to the work of someone else. On that first morning at Division, Widmerpool spoke at length of his own methods. He was already sitting at his table when I arrived in the room. Removing his spectacles, he began to polish them vigorously, assuming at the same time a manner of hearty military geniality. — Anthony Powell

Unashamed, accustomed to solitude, he began to enjoy his near-invisibility. From his position at the edge of the school around him, he took vicarious pleasure in the activities of those around him, silently celebrating the rise or fall of this or that playground emperor, or the examination failures of particularly unappetizing class-fellows: the delights of the spectator. — Salman Rushdie

Great cycles of history began with vigorous cultures awakening to the needs of children, but collapsing with frayed family ties. Have we failed to learn lessons which Ancient China, Greece and Rome learned too late - about day care and death houses for old folks? Do we without protest accept accelerating preschool and nursing home cultures which warn ominously that the earlier you institutionalize your child, the earlier he will institutionalize you! — Raymond S. Moore

I came down successfully through Picasso and Braque, down through Pollock, I guess, but I began to stop at Franz Kline and the Abstractionists. I like their design, brilliant design, marvelous color layers. But I don't find any human content there. I'm from an old school, and painting has to have human content for me. — Irving Stone

With a mind as bright as yours you will want to find a proper school to continue your education ... You must continue the education your mother began. Young women must have an education. — Gloria Whelan

Which women would no longer be the second-rate, unimportant creatures that they were now considered, but the equal and respected companions of men. Indeed, that school garden, now trimly beautiful in its twenty-year-old mellowness, but then recently hewn from the rough surface of the Downs and golden-hedged with tangled gorse and broom, has been for me somehow associated with every past phase of life. There, at the age of sixteen, I first began to dream how the men and women of my generation - with myself, of course, conspicuous among that galaxy of Leonardos - would inaugurate a new Renaissance on a colossal scale, and incidentally redeem all the foolish mistakes of our forefathers. — Vera Brittain

And then you grew up, went to school, and began to 'philosophize,' didn't you? We all go through the same thing. It seems that during adolescence a person's inner life is suddenly weakened, stripped of its natural courage. In his thinking he no longer dares stand face to face with reality or mystery; he begins to see them through the opinions of 'grown-ups,' through books and courses and professors. Still, a voice remains which is not completely muffled and which cries out every so often - every time its gag is loosened by an unexpected jolt in the routine. The voice cries out its great questioning of everything, but we stifle it again right away. — Rene Daumal

Lincoln was raised in the thick of Old School Calvinism. In Kentucky and Indiana, his parents belonged to a fire-breathing sect called Separate Baptism, in which congregants heard - in the tradition of Jonathan Edward's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - that they were bound for eternal hellfire, and nothing they could do or say or think would change their fate. Preachers did allow that a chosen few were ordained for grace and would be saved, but these fortunate ones had been selected by God before time began. As one Baptist preacher in Lincoln's Kentucky explained it, "Long before the morning stars sang together . . . the Almighty looked down upon the ages yet unborn, as it were, in review before him, and selected one here and another there to enjoy eternal life and left the rest to the blackness of darkness forever." Such Baptist ministers were so intense that it has been said that they "out-Calvined Calvin. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

I told him what my dad had said. That got him laughing and as we pulled into the school parking lot, even the sight of Rafe waiting for me only made him roll his eyes.
We got out. I glanced at Daniel.
He sighed. "Go on."
"You sound like you're giving a five-year-old permission to play with an unsuitable friend."
"If the shoe fits ... "
I flipped him off.
"Watch it or I won't marry you," he said. "Truck of no truck."
I laughed and jogged over to Rafe.
"Did he just say ... ?" Rafe began. — Kelley Armstrong

Delaware State began as a school bent on service - teaching education, social services and nursing. — Michael N. Castle

I was influenced by the Beats because I actually just began to commit adolescence around 1955, when "Howl" and Rebel Without a Cause and a lot of other new things were popping up. (Again I'm trying to give you a finite version of this career.) And then I came under the sway of Wallace Stevens when I was in college and graduate school, and basically set as a life goal the ambition of writing third-rate Wallace Stevens. I thought I would be completely content if I was recognized at some later point in my life as a third-rate Wallace Stevens. — Billy Collins

I started to go to the library, devouring every book I could lay my hands on. Once I began a book, I couldn't put it down. It was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class — Haruki Murakami

The fact that nobody liked me at school began to fade out of my mind like blue magic marker reminders scrawled on the back of a greasy fist." greasy fist." - Marilyn Manson — Marilyn Manson

I had not expected the gentle, tentative surge of gratitude I began to feel...for St. Paul's School, the spring, and the early morning. I needed the morning light and the warbling birds. I needed to find a way to live in this place for a moment and get the good of it. I had tried to hold myself apart, and the aloneness proved more terrible than what I had tried to escape. — Lorene Cary

Once I began a book, I couldn't put it down. It was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class. But I had almost no desire to talk with anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. — Haruki Murakami

She looked so disappointed, so grieved and desperate that Clem longed to comfort her, only he couldn't think of thing to say that she hadn't heard a hundred times from Dad and Dr. Snow and Mrs. Mack: how things would get better in time, though no one knew how much time, and that life might be a little better for her and Jess once school began again. — Judith Clarke

Only in high school when I began programming computers, did I become interested in tech and start-ups, which led me to attend Stanford and major in Computer Science. — Clara Shih

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school. — Ray Bradbury

Theatre aside, my penchant for the extended monologue began with my reading of Browning's dramatic monologues, in high school. My inclination to adopt the form for prose was confirmed by Richard Howard's book of dramatic monologues, Untitled Subjects. — Norman Lock

Dad, I need to talk to you about something."
He peeked over his shoulder. "I thought you'd already googled all that period and birds-and-bees stuff."
"Dad ... "
He turned around, suddenly concerned. "Are you pregnant? Are you gay? I'd rather you were gay than pregnant. Unless you're pregnant. Then we'll deal. Whatever it is, we'll deal. Are you pregnant?"
"No," Cath said.
"Okay ... " He leaned back against the sink and began tapping wet fingers against the counter.
"I'm not gay either."
"What does that leave?"
"Um ... school, I guess."
"You're having problems in school? I don't believe that. Are you sure you're not pregnant? — Rainbow Rowell

Everyone (with the exception of certain school boards in the United States) now knows that the universe is not static but is expanding and that the expansion began in an incredibly hot, dense Big Bang approximately 13.72 billion years ago. — Lawrence M. Krauss

I took Russian in high school," Nathan said, climbing out of the pool. He'd decided to swim laps that afternoon instead of going to the gym.
"Did you?" Harrison asked, grinning at him.
"Yeah." Nathan grabbed his towel from the little patio table and began dabbing at his face. "But the only thing I remember is, Mozhno li kopirovat vashi domashnie zodaneeye?"
"Let me guess," I said. "You just asked me where the bathroom is, right?"
"No." He scoffed, flicking his wet towel at me. "I was beyond that basic stuff. I took two years of it. Give me some credit."
"Then what does it mean?" I asked.
"It means, 'Can I copy your homework? — Kody Keplinger

He hadn't developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season.

But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in the two biggest games on the schedule. He wasn't the player anybody expected him to be, but he got the job done-at times spectacularly. — Neil Hayes

Fortunately, like most children, I had learned what is most valuable, most indispensable for life before school years began, taught by apple trees, by rain and sun, river and woods ... — Hermann Hesse

Gradually, I began to resent Christian school and doubt everything I was told. It became clear that the suffering they were praying to be released from was a suffering they had imposed on themselves - and now us. The beast they lived in fear of was really themselves: It was man, not some mythological demon, that was going to destroy man in the end. And this beast had been created out of their fear. — Marilyn Manson

When my first wife & I began the school, we had one main idea: to make the school fit the child - instead of making the child fit the school. — Alexander Sutherland Neill

My opportunity to design school choice systems began in 2003 with a phone call from Jeremy Lack at the New York City Department of Education. He knew of my work on the medical match and wondered if similar efforts might help reorganize the dysfunctional, congested system then used to match students to high schools. — Alvin E. Roth

Our teachers were firm believers in the corporal punishment that Americans had given up, which was probably one reason they could no longer win wars. For us, violence began at home and continued in school, parents and teachers beating children and students like Persian rugs to shake the dust of complacency and stupidity out of them, and in that way make them more beautiful. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

The students we saw were all bright, attractive, and polite, and the teachers all seemed to be smart and dedicated, and I began to appreciate the benefits of a private school education. If only I'd had the opportunity to attend a place like this, who knows what I might have become? Perhaps instead of a mere blood-spatter analyst who slunk away at night to kill without conscience, I could have become a doctor, or a physicist, or even a senator who slunk away at night to kill without conscience. It was terribly sad to think of all my wasted potential. — Jeff Lindsay

When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry. — Grace Paley

I need one, Momma, how come I don't have a baby sister?"

Rachel smiled. "You're so perfect. There was no need to ask for another."

Sophie cocked her head to the side like a puppy. "Ask who?"

"The Stork," Faith supplied.

Sophie looked thoroughly confused then. "I thought sex caused babies."

Rachel patted Faith on the back when she began to cough.

Kaycee shook her head. "Rhonda at school told me that special music causes babies. her sister told her that when her mom and dad play music in their bedroom, babies were being made. Momma, you play music in your room, but we don't have a baby."

"I don't have that particular CD, sweetie."

"My friend told me that it takes a penny and a Virginia to make a baby," Sophie said and sent Faith into another coughing fit. — Robin Alexander

Mr. Klamp laid down the law. No tardiness, no talking above 40 decibels, no untied shoelaces, no visible undergarments, no eating, no chewing gum, no chewing tobacco, no chewing betel nuts, no chewing coca leaves, no chewing out students (unless Mr. Klamp was doing the chewing out), no chewing out teachers (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of temper (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of affection (no exceptions), no pets over one ounce or under one ton, and no singing, except in Bulgarian. I began to think Mr Klamp wouldn't be so bad ... — Polly Shulman

The worst thing was that her school-friends began to copy her. They thought it was dead cool to be a little monster like Lucretia Crum! — Babette Cole

Any school would gain, if the students began the day with meditation, cleared their heads and got themselves centered. — Pico Iyer

I began filmmaking in high school, at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. My first documentary was about a dysfunctional obese middle-aged carpet cleaner named Bill, who lived with his Mom, and his love affair with Anna, a drug-addicted prostitute. I made that when I was 16. — Yony Leyser

As a teenager, I began to question the Great Christian Sorting System. My gay friends in high school were kind and funny and loved me, so I suspected that my church had placed them in the wrong category ... Injustices in the world needed to be addressed and not ignored. Christians weren't good; people who fought for peace and justice were good. I had been lied to, and in my anger at being lied to about the containers, I left the church. But it turns out, I hadn't actually escaped the sorting system. I had just changed the labels. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands. — Chinua Achebe

I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills around Cedar Rapids, repeating the lines over and over until I had them right, making some of the rhythm of the horse help. — Paul Engle

On a long sea voyage the rowers of Carib merchant canoes kept a small brazier of coals going amidships. Every 30 minutes or so, a small wad of tobacco leaves was placed on the brazier and, as the smoke began to rise, the rowers would put a forked nose pipe made from the breastbone of a seabird into the fumes and draw them in. After holding the smoke for awhile, a rower would exhale powerfully with a shout like high school players breaking a football huddle and then go back to the awesome task of single-handedly rowing a fully loaded commercial canoe over the open seas. — Bill Drake

Now this was clearly one of the greatest improvements on the education system since time began and I was greatly looking forward to being enrolled but Aunt Penn said that I didn't have to do much of anything until autumn term, which didn't start until September, and by that time no one was going to school anyway due to the You Know What. — Meg Rosoff

My parents say it all began with my role of Percy the Polar Bear back in nursery school! I began dance classes at the age of five (you would never guess though) and then I went on to join my local theatre group, Glantawe Players, at the age of eight and then Swansea Amateur Dramatics Society. I then joined the National Youth Music Theatre, so I really can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in Musical Theatre! — Francesca Jackson

But now I began to notice odd moments that suggested he was not the brightest lighthouse on the coastline. For instance, he once got very cross during assembly because he felt the boys had become lazy, and so he demanded that every single boy in the school should improve his ranking in class in the course of the next fortnight. — John Cleese

Three years ago, researchers at Purdue University began monitoring every hit sustained by two high school teams. The goal was to study the effect of concussions. But when researchers administered cognitive tests to players who had never been concussed, hoping to set up a control group, they discovered that these teens showed diminished brain function as well. As the season wore on, their cognitive abilities plummeted. In some cases, brain activity in the frontal lobes - the region responsible for reasoning - nearly disappeared by season's end. "You have the classic stereotype of the dumb jock and I think the real issue is that's not how they start out," explained Thomas Talavage, one of the professors of the study. "We actually create that individual. — Steve Almond

After I left school, where I studied art, photography and textiles at A-level, I started doing an apprenticeship in interior design, but I wasn't really enjoying it very much, so I decided to do something creative, and in 2009, I began blogging. — Zoe Sugg

I've always been a creative person, and I'd always wanted to paint, so I went to art school and began painting and sculpting. — Shirley Eaton

My name is Lev," said Lev.
"My name is Lydia," said the woman. And they shook hands, Lev's hand holding the scrunched-up kerchief and Lydia's hand rough with salt and smelling of egg, and then Lev asked, "What are you planning to do in En gland?" and Lydia said, "I have some interviews in London for jobs as a translator."
"That sounds promising."
"I hope so. I was a teacher of English at School 237 in Yarbl, so my language is very colloquial."
Lev looked at Lydia. It wasn't difficult to imagine her standing in front of a class and writing words on a blackboard. He said, "I wonder why you're leaving our country when you had a good job at School 237 in Yarbl?"
"Well," said Lydia, "I became very tired of the view from my window. Every day, summer and winter, I looked out at the schoolyard and the high fence and the apartment block beyond, and I began to imagine I would die seeing these things, and I didn't want this. I expect you understand what I mean? — Rose Tremain

I was surfing the Internet, and I came across a school in Atlanta where you could learn how to climb trees with ropes the way the pros do. It sounded terrific, and so I went down there, and I began to learn these kind of rarified techniques for how you get up and down trees while using special ropes and gear. — Richard Preston

In my final year of attending a Christian sports camp in rural Missouri, the year before I started high school, they began to offer an elective Bible study group for young Christians who wanted a chance to read in the afternoons instead of learn to water-ski. — Mallory Ortberg

Did I really read every single book in the school? My mother maintains I did. Maybe I just told the teachers I had and they all believed me. Maybe this is where the lying about books really began. Where were the checks and balances? I blame the authorities. — Andy Miller

I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater. — Nancy Allen

I didn't just wake up one morning and think, "I'm a boy!" It sort of crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder a few times before I started to pay attention I began to think that the word "girl" didn't quite fit me. It was like a shoe that was too small -- it pinched me. — Cat Clarke

The doggy demolition began slowly. Clothes, hairbrushes, dishes, pens, wristwatch, toothbrush (yes, he'd reached it somehow) - anything I came in contact with became an object to chew, maul, consume. Toys, dog chews, or rawhides were scoffed at while he was alone; it had to be something of mine. He ate two remote controls, binoculars, a cherished baseball from high school, two belts, a computer mouse and keyboard, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and too many shoes to count. Even the shifter knob and window cranks in my Civic fell victim to Lou's teeth. Anything I handled eventually became dog food. — Steve Duno

The color and spectacle of Mexico's streets sparked my interest in community driven space and experience, a passion that I began to develop while studying architecture at Syracuse University and then at the Architectural Association School in London. Having been immersed in such a diverse array of lively environments, it would be impossible for me not to use these memories and experiences as inspiration for my work. — David Rockwell

I began to feel again something that I had been only dimly aware of before. It was a small, surprising sense of disappointment even as he was kissing me, but the violins were so loud at the time I could hear nothing else. Now the disappointment was returning and with it the realization that the magic had come only from the moment, not from him. It was different with you. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same. The setting never mattered. On the sidewalk in front of my house, at the enchanted place in the desert, walking the halls at school- where I was with you, I heard violins. — Jerry Spinelli

AAAAAAAAAAHHH !! (That was me screaming in frustration!) I can't believe I overslept! AGAIN! Now I'm probably going to be late for school! WHY?!! Because my bratty little sister, Brianna, has been sneaking into my bedroom at night and stealing my alarm clock! She's been using it to get up extra early to make a peanut butter, jelly, and pickle sandwich to take to school for lunch. YES! She actually adds PICKLES! I don't know which is more NAUSEATING, Brianna or her disgusting sandwich! Anyway, now I have less than three minutes to shower, shampoo, brush, dress, pack, eat, gloss, and GO! This is how my very CRUDDY day began. . . . — Rachel Renee Russell