Susan Campbell Bartoletti Quotes

Over the years, my students influenced me greatly, and I've learned many lessons from them. I have an immense amount of respect for them, and I think that respect for your audience is the foremost requirement for anyone who wants to write.

What good are kindness, self-sacrifice, energy, and a sense of responsibility if they are so jealously guarded that only one's brothers and sisters may benefit from them?"

- Melita Maschmann

God loves us all. He does not love us more than he loves our enemies.

In the end, I felt hope. I realized that my soul was not permanently scarred after all. I was still a human being."

- Karl Schnibbe

By nature, human beings search for ways to make sense and meaning out of their lives and their world. One way that we make meaning is through the telling of our stories. Stories connect us, teach us, and warn us never to forget.

'Between Shades of Gray' is a story of astonishing force. I feel grateful for a writer like Ruta Sepetys who bravely tells the hard story of what happens to the innocent when world leaders and their minions choose hate and oppression. Beautiful and unforgettable.

I never intended to be a teacher, but once I started teaching, I found that junior high kids are easy to get hooked on, and I stayed for nearly twenty years.

This is a war against lies. If we want to win, we can't attack in straight lines.

The worst experience can bring out a person's deepest strength.

Some of the younger boys looked forward to the chance to sell papers in a good spot, but most were simply afraid to refuse the bigger boys. "I made a deal with a guy," said Philip Marcus. "I said I'd buy him out. But when I looked at all the papers he had left, there was more than I thought I could sell. But there wasn't two ways about it. I had to buy them and I did. I started to bawl. And while I was standing there bawling, I sold all them sheets.

After the paper rush subsided, the older boys sometimes struck deals with the younger newsies to buy their leftover papers. 'One of the big guys would say to one of the little guys, 'Hey, punk, want to buy me out tonight?' said Philip Marcus. 'An' the little guy said yes. It was his ass if he didn't.

For 'The Journal of Finn Reardon,' I traveled to New York City and walked the streets where Finn and his friends would have lived, worked, and played. I visited the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street and toured an actual flat in which families like Finn's might have lived.

You cannot repay evil with evil.