Attales Middle School Quotes

She takes a breath and holds it. In middle school the girls used to have contests to see who could hold their breath the longest; Alice once held it until she fainted. ~ Erika Swyler

Middle school's amazing. It is extraordinary. An extraordinary time. ~ Michael Scott

If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or aesthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anythi ~ G.K. Chesterton

For years I didn't realize this because so many others had more. We were surrounded by extreme affluence, which tricks you into thinking you're in the middle of the pack. I mean, sure, we have twenty-four hundred square feet for only five humans to live in, but our kids have never been on an airplane, so how rich could we be? We haven't traveled to Italy, my kids are in public schools, and we don't even own a time-share. (Roll eyes here.) But it gets fuzzy once you spend time with people below your rung. I started seeing my stuff with fresh eyes, realizing we had everything. I mean everything. We've never missed a meal or even skimped on one. We have a beautiful home in a great neighborhood. Our kids are in a Texas exemplary school. We drive two cars under warranty. We've never gone a day without health insurance. Our closets are overflowing. We throw away food we didn't eat, clothes we barely wore, trash that will never disintegrate, stuff that fell out of fashion. ~ Jen Hatmaker

Then you've got the kids who live within a mile of the school and can walk home. Although this may not sound glamorous, it still beats my place on the totem pole: the bottom. Yes, we of the bus routes find ourselves in a general throng outside the auditorium, where all who pass may mock us.We look forward to an hour-long ride of picking up and dropping off loud middle schoolers and louder elementary kids and peeling our hamstrings off the pleather seats over and over again in the heat. ~ Alecia Whitaker

You got to miss class to do it. Like, many periods of school. And then they took us to an elementary or middle school, and we told kids that they could be cool when they grew up even if they didn't do drugs. ~ Ilana Glazer

Middle School," Griffin repeated. "Where did they come up with that, anyway? We're in the middle of what, exactly? too old for elementary school, but not big enough for high school. So they shove us here. Look around. There's not an interesting person in sight, just a bunch of clones who want to be like everyone else. ~ James Preller

I knew this one Catholic boy, Louis Shaney, when I was at the Whooton School. Then, after a while, right in the middle of the goddam conversation, he asked me, "Did you happen to notice where the Catholic church is in town, by any chance?" The thing was, you could tell by the way he asked me that he was trying to find out if I was a Catholic. He really was. Not that he was prejudiced or anything, but he just wanted to know. He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would've enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. I'm not saying it ruined our conversation or anything - it didn't - but it sure as hell didn't do it any good. That's why I was glad those two nuns didn't ask me if I was a Catholic. It wouldn't have spoiled the conversation if they had, but it would've been different, probably. I'm not saying I blame Catholics. I don't. I'd be the same way, probably, if I was a Catholic. It's just like those suitcases I was telling you about, in a way. All I'm saying is that it's no good for a nice conversation. That's all I'm saying. ~ J.D. Salinger

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

Callie scrambled from under the covers, dashed around the bed, and flung herself into Luce's arms. "They kept telling me you were going to be okay, but in that lying, we're-also-completely-terrified-we're-just-not-going-to-explain-a-word-to-you kind of way. Do you even realize how thoroughly spooky that was? It was like you physically dropped off the face of the Earth-"
Luce hugged her back tightly. As far as Callie knew, Luce had been gone only since the night before.
"Okay, you two," Molly growled, pulling Luce away from Callie, "you can OMG your faces off later. I didn't lie in your bed in that cheap polyester wig all night enacting Luce-with-stomach-flue so you guys could blow our cover now." She rolled her eyes. "Amateurs."
"Hold on. You did what?" Luce asked.
"After you...disappeared," Callie said breathlessly, "we knew we could never explain it to your parents. I mean, I could barely fathom it after seeing it with my own eyes. When Gabbe fixed up the backyard, I told your parents you felt sick and had gone to bed, and Molly pretended to be you and-"
"Lucky I found this in your closet." Molly twirled a short wavy black wig around one finger. "Halloween remnant?"
"Wonder Woman." Luce winced, regretting her middle school Halloween costume, and not for the first time.
"Well, it worked."
It was strange to see Molly-who'd once sided with Lucifer-helping her. But even Molly, like Cam and Roland, didn't want to fall again. So here they w ~ Lauren Kate

Don't make me turn on the room's ability blockers. I'm not teaching middle school here. And turn off your phones, people. ~ Kasie West

One day, an unusually exciting event interrupted the rhythm of our regular middle-class teenage lives. A Russian woman, the mother of a girl in our class, was run over by a New York City bound train right in the center of town. Our classmate left school in the middle of the semester. The gossip was that the woman must have thrown herself under the train. The adults whispered about reasons, usual ones, but my friends and I were too busy planning what to wear to the prom to wonder about the savagery of adult passion. ~ Inna Swinton

There are some things, like your eighth grade boyfriend kissing some other girl at a middle school dance, that are easy to forgive. And there are some things that are just unforgivable. ~ Jennifer Mathieu

School was rough for me. I was a good student in middle school, but high school wasn't so fun. I still pulled through, though! I excelled in art, fashion, history and English literature - anything creative. Math and science I struggled a bit more in. ~ India De Beaufort

Margaret Thatcher has one great advantage - she is a daughter of the people and looks trim, as the daughter of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she's a member of the upper-middle class and can achieve the kitchen-sink revolutionary look that one cannot get unless one has been to a really good school. ~ Rebecca West

Tom was not good at math. He'd started to lose his way in middle school, as so many American kids did. It had happened gradually; first he hadn't understood one lesson, and then another and another. ~ Amanda Ripley

So who are you writing to?"
I hesitate. "Do you remember John Ambrose McClaren?"
He rolls his eyes. "Of course I remember John Ambrose McClaren. I had a crush on him in seventh grade."
"I had a crush on him in eighth!"
"Of course you did. We all did. In middle school you either liked John or you liked Peter. Those were the two main choices. Like Betty and Veronica. Obviously John is Betty and Peter's Veronica." He pauses. "Remember how John used to have that really endearing stutter?"
"Yes! I mourned it a little when it went away. It was so sweet. So boyish. And do you remember how his hair was the color of pale butter? Like, the way I bet freshly churned butter looks."
"I thought it was more like moonlit corn silk, but yeah. So how did he turn out?"
"I don't know…It's strange because there's the him I remember from middle school, and that's just my memory of him, but then there's the him now."
"Did you guys ever go out back then?"
"Oh no! Never."
"So that's probably why you're curious about him now."
"I didn't say I was curious."
Lucas gives me a look. "You basically did. I don't blame you. I'd be curious too."
"It's just fun to think about. ~ Jenny Han

The bad news in our most cosmopolitan and vibrant cities is that many middle-class people can no longer afford to live in 'middle-class' school districts. ~ Sandra Tsing Loh

One thing I've learned after being a middle-school director for twenty years: there are almost always more than two sides to every story. Although I don't know the details, I have an inkling about what may have sparked the confrontation with Julian. While nothing justifies striking another student - ever - I also know good friends are sometimes worth defending. ~ R.J. Palacio

I ... [proposed] three distinct grades of education, reaching all classes. 1. Elementary schools for all children generally, rich and poor. 2. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the common purposes of life and such as should be desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. And 3d. an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally and in their highest degree ... The expenses of [the elementary] schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I never even went to high school because I went straight from middle school into the music business. I don't really know what it is supposed to be like. ~ Cheyenne Kimball

If I understand you right,' he says, 'you're saying that you're basically a calculating manipulative person who always says what you think will get somebody to approve of you or form some impression of you you think you want.' I told him that was maybe a little simplistic but basically accurate, and he said further that as he understood it I was saying that I felt as if I was trapped in this false way of being and unable ever to be really open and tell the truth irregardless of whether it'd make me look good in others' eyes or not. And I somewhat resignedly said yes, and that I seemed always to have had this fraudulent, calculating part of my brain firing way all the time, as if I were constantly playing chess with everybody and figuring out that if I wanted them to move a certain way I had to move in such a way as to induce them to move that way. He asked if I ever played chess, and I told him I used to in middle school but quit because I couldn't be as good as I eventually wanted to be, how frustrating it was to get just good enough to know what getting really good at it would be like but not being able to get that good, etc. ~ David Foster Wallace

Early in the boob-emerging years, I had no boobs, and I was touchy about it. Remember in middle school algebra class, you'd type 55378008 on your calculator, turn it upside down, and hand it to the flat-chested girl across the aisle? I was that girl, you bi-yotch. I would have died twice if any of the boys had mentioned my booblets.
Last year, I thought my boobs had progressed quite nicely. And I progressed from the one-piece into a tankini. But I wasn't quite ready for any more exposure. I didn't want the boys to treat me like a girl.
Now I did. So today I'd worn a cute little bikini. Over that, I still wore Adam's cutoff jeans. Amazingly, they looked sexy, riding low on my hips, when I traded the football T-shirt for a pink tank that ended above my belly button and hugged my figure. I even had a little cleavage. I was so proud. Sean was going to love it.
Mrs. Vader stared at my chest, perplexed. Finally she said, "Oh, I get it. You're trying to look hot."
"Thank you!" Mission accomplished.
"Here's a hint. Close your legs."
I snapped my thighs together on the stool. People always scolded me for sitting like a boy. Then I slid off the stool and stomped to the door in a huff. "Where do you want me?"
She'd turned back to the computer. "You've got gas."
Oh, goody. I headed out the office door, toward the front dock to man the gas pumps. This meant at some point during the day, one of the boys would look around the marina office and ask, " ~ Jennifer Echols

I've been entrepreneurial since middle school. I was always arranging bake sales, dances and school trips to raise money for the Dalton School. ~ Dylan Lauren

I asked her to tell me what the best moment of her life had been

Did she?

Yes, she told me about a trip the two of you had taken to Europe together right after you graduated from high school.

Pascal in Paris, it had been a dream of hers to visit Pascal's grave. On that trip she finally did. I'd never seen her so excited.

That wasn't it.

It wasn't?

No, it was in a hostel in Venice. The two of you had been travelling for a couple of weeks and all of your clothes were filthy. You didn't mind the dirty clothes very much. Lila said you were able to roll with the punches and for you, everything about the trip, even the dirty laundry, was a great adventure. But Lila liked things a certain way, and she hated being dirty. That day she had gone off in search of a laundry mat but hadn't been able to find one. You were sleeping in a room with a dozen bunks, women and men together. In the middle of the night Lila woke up and realized you weren't in your bed. She thought you must have gone to the bathroom, but after a couple minutes when you hadn't returned she became worried. She climbed down from her bunk and went to the bathroom to find you, you weren't there. She wondered up and down the hallway softly calling your name. A few of the rooms were private and had the doors closed. As she became increasingly worried she began putting her ear to those doors listening for you. Then she heard banging down below. Alarmed she wen ~ Michelle Richmond

But the truth is that I had never wanted him to kiss me, not in the way you are supposed to want these things. I mean, he was gorgeous. I was attracted to him. I thought about him in that way, to borrow a phrase from the middle school vernacular. But the actual touch, the realized touch ... it was all wrong. ~ John Green

I never have issues in handling the fame. I was in a boarding school, as I am from a middle-class family. We didn't have a lot of money, so we all learned to respect money and understood its real value. ~ Suresh Raina

If you're a kid who was not especially a star in your high school, I recommend going to a college in the middle of nowhere. I got all the attention I could ever have wanted. ~ Mindy Kaling

All Leningrad Orientalists of the middle and younger generation were arrested. The entire staff of the Institute of the North, except for its NKVD informers, was arrested. They even went after schoolteachers. In Sverdlovsk one case involved thirty secondary schoolteachers and the head of the Provincial Education Department, Perel. 37 One of the terrible accusations against them was that they had made arrangements to have a New Year's tree in order to burn down the school. And the club fell with the regularity of a pendulum on the heads of the engineers - who by this time were no longer "bourgeois" but a whole Soviet generation of engineers. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I'd always thought that being seen was about what people perceived with their eyes. But by the time the Eugene Field Memorial Middle School made the fall trip to the aquarium, I, Suzy Swanson, had disappeared entirely. Being seen is more about the ears than the eyes, it turns out. ~ Ali Benjamin

I went to art school for about a year. I was born and raised in the Willamette Valley in Oregon into a middle-class family who didn't have the funds to say, "Here, kid. Here's your money for school." So I worked real hard during the summer and saved money and was able to go to school for a year and borrowed a little money which I paid back after that first year. ~ Mike Royer

I started acting pretty young, so I haven't had too many odd jobs. But I used to sell candy out of my locker in middle school. ~ Paul Dano

Kelly held up a finger. "No half-assed middle school kissing, either."
"Okay."
"I want the whole deal."
"This is starting to feel like I'm leasing a car or something."
"I'm serious, I want the Irish special."
Nick rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. "Fine. Jesus. ~ Abigail Roux

I think I'm like that nerdy dad from middle school who always has a video camera, but in the same respect, I only take it out during interesting occasions. ~ Casey Neistat

Too soon the two weeks were over and we were back in Lugano, and there we learned about Disaster.
We weren't completely ignorant. We knew about disaster from our previous schools and previous lives. We'd had access to televisions and newspapers. But the return to Lugano marked the beginning of Global Awareness Month, and in each of our classes, we talked about disaster: disaster man-made and natural. We talked about ozone depletion and the extinction of species and depleted rain forests and war and poverty and AIDS. We talked about refugees and slaughter and famine.
We were in the middle school and were getting, according to Uncle Max, a diluted version of what the upper-schoolers were facing. An Iraqi boy from the upper school came to our history class and talked about what it felt like when the Americans bombed his country. Keisuke talked about how he felt responsible for World War II, and a German student said she felt the same.
We got into heated discussions over the neglect of infant females in some cultures, and horrific cases of child abuse worldwide. We fasted one day each week to raise our consciousness about hunger, and we sent money and canned goods and clothing to charities.
In one class, after we watched a movie about traumas in Rwanda, and a Rwandan student told us about seeing his mother killed, Mari threw up. We were all having nightmares.
At home, Aunt Sandy pleaded with Uncle Max. "This is too much!" she said. "You can't dump all the ~ Sharon Creech

I've never run into a person who yearns for their middle school days. ~ Jeff Kinney

'True School' is one great big reminder. It's a reminder to everybody in that middle school bracket that was in school when playing hard to get was out. ~ Monie Love

I was kicked out of middle school a few times. This guy who was kind of a d*** and a bully got hit by a car. I jumped up and went, YEAH Apparently that wasnt cool with some people cause I got kicked out. ~ Tom DeLonge

After so many years drifting, not connected to anything, I'm finally tethered. Safe and loved, in the middle.
We start senior year like kings, like nothing can ever tear us apart.
We're wrong. ~ Abigail Haas

A knot grew in his chest. All signs of weakness, nerves, stress. He looked around him at the true examples of men - at least it seemed that way. Six years ago he had graduated from New York University, around the middle of his class in film school. He quickly learned that the middle meant "unemployable. ~ Derek Blass

I made a list of the happiest periods in my life, and I realized that none of them involved money. I realized that building stuff and being creative and inventive made me happy. connecting with a friend and talking through the entire night until the sun rose made me happy. Trick-or-treating in middle school with a group of my closest friends made me happy. Pickles made me happy. ~ Tony Hsieh

New Rule: Bring back a little pubic hair. Not a lot, I'm not talking about reviving that 1973 look that said "I'm liberated" and "I'm smuggling a hedgehog."I just want a friendly, fuzzy calling card that's a middle ground between toddler smooth and "Dr. Livingston, I presume?" It's supposed to have some hair on it. It's a pussy, not Dr. Evil's cat. Call me old school, but there's a name for a guy who needs it hair-free: He's called a pedophile. ~ Bill Maher

The number of African Americans in my profession is woefully small; about two percent of architects in the country are black. I'd like to see more diversity. That's why whenever I'm asked to speak at middle and high schools I always say yes. ~ Philip Freelon

In middle school, I had an '87 Regal. That was unheard of. ~ Young Jeezy

I went to elementary school in L.A. I was born in L.A. My mother was from Redondo Beach. My father was French. He died six months before I was born, so my mother went home. I was born there. Not the childhood that most people think. Middle-class, raised by my mother. Single mom. ~ Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

See that guy over there?" I nod toward a man in jean shorts and a Budweiser T-shirt. "Am I that obvious?"
St. Clair squints at him. "Obviously what? Balding? Overweight? Tasteless?"
"American."
He sighs melodramtically. "Honestly, Anna. You must get over this."
"I just don't want to offend anyone. I hear they offend easily."
"You're not offending anyone except me right now."
"What about her?" I point to a middle-aged woman in khaki shorts and a knit top with stars and stripes on it.She has a camera strapped to her belt and is arguing with a man in a bucket hat. Her husband,I suppose.
"Completely offensive."
"I mean,am I as obvious as her?"
"Considering she's wearing the American flag, I'd venture a no on that one." He bites his thumbnail. "Listen.I think I have a solution to your problem, but you'll have to wait for it. Just promise you'll stop asking me to compare you to fifty-year-old women,and I'll take care of everything."
"How? With what? A French passport?"
He snorts. "I didn't say I'd make you French." I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off. "Deal?"
"Deal," I say uncomfortably. I don't care for surprises. "But it better be good."
"Oh,it's good." And St. Clair looks so smug that I'm about to call him on it, when I realize I can't see our school anymore.
I don't believe it.He's completely distracted me. ~ Stephanie Perkins