Mid Grade Quotes

Turns out, most girls would rather put on lip gloss than play with sand toads. ~ Jenny Lundquist

Mid-grade readers don't have short attention spans, they just have low boredom tolerance. ~ Judith Viorst

What's all this nonsense about odd vision and not fitting in? There are plenty worse things in this world than not fitting in--like fitting in way too much. You strike me as a real original, Izzy Malone, in a world that loves carbon copies. If you think you beautified something, I believe you. I've never understood why folks love safe, neutral colors so much. Colors are what make this world worth living in. ~ Jenny Lundquist

P.S. Please don't call me Isabella. That name belongs to a really pretty girl who never wrecks her clothes and who never gets dirt under her fingernails. That's definitely not me. My name is Izzy. ~ Jenny Lundquist

As for learning to wear high heels, no need to worry. I've got no tolerance for those dreadful things. If God wanted us girls tottering around like a bunch of drunken sailors, we'd have been born wearing stilts! ~ Jenny Lundquist

What has prepared Heather for her life in the Burrow?
Sleep, being hit over the head once in sixth grade and losing consciousness for a minute, waking up to find out someone had pushed her off the swings.
A life made of air ~ Jim Krusoe

Danger is the snack food of a true sleuth. ~ Mac Barnett

My attention was like cooking butter, not spreadable at the best of times. And when it was spreadable, it could destroy your toast by setting it ablaze. I was unpredictable, even to myself. ~ Shoeburn Ruffet

To me, knowing how to do something is like cheating.
That's why I never studied in grade school. Studying made passing tests too easy. Anybody can pass a test if he studies. But I wanted to explore the furthest limit of my inh'rnt knowledge. Apparently my limit is C minus. ~ Gary Reilly

Schooling after the second grade plays only a minor role in creating or reducing gaps. ~ James Heckman

Michelle shrugged off Sam's aggression. Her eyes misted with memories. "Our curveball was a brain tumor. A grade IV astrocytoma, to be specific. He tried all the treatments - chemo, radiation, even surgery. Nothing helped alleviate his symptoms or his suffering. He was dying in the most horrible way. Seizures, nausea, blinding headaches, memory loss like an Alzheimer's patient. I didn't know what it was like to watch someone I love suffer so much, but I can relate to Julie's pain because the experience was utterly excruciating. ~ Daniel Palmer

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. ~ Laurence J. Peter

In your mid-30s, it's time to start playing guys of compromise. And as you get older, men of bitter compromise ~ Tom Hanks

This girl," I tell Rachel. "That's not what I look like. That's not who I am." I have a feeling Rachel will get this because she pretended to be straight all through high school, even though she figured out she was a lesbian when she was in eighth grade.

I say it again, "That's not me."

Her eyes light up. "Great. Let's see if we can find her. ~ Jennifer Niven

If you know the history of the whole concept of whiteness if you know the history of the whole concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason you know that it was a trick, and it's worked brilliantly. You see, prior to the mid to late 1600s, in the colonies of what would become the United States, there was no such thing as the white race. Those of us of European descent did not refer to ourselves by that term really ever before then. ~ Tim Wise

I lay there for three whole days, totally paralyzed. My friends helped me to the bathroom and anywhere else I needed to move; but I have very vague impressions of those days because it was a time of complete darkness for me. Somebody told me later that what I had was a form of hysteria: my body and my mid fled into paralysis. There was nothing wrong with me organically, but somewhere inside I suffered a complete breakdown. ~ Diet Eman

Reading is a light. ~ Larry Good

I'm from Wisconsin; well, that's where I went to school from, like, sixth grade till I graduated high school. ~ Evan Glodell

Maybe nostalgia is itself the problem. A Democrat I met in Macon during a conversation we had about the local enthusiasm for Trump told me that "people want to go back to Mayberry", the setting of the beloved old Andy Griffith Show. (As it happens, the actual model for Mayberry, Mount Airy, a bedraggled town in North Carolina, has gone all in on the Trump revolution, as the Washington Post recently reported.)

Maybe it's also true, as my liberal friends believe, that what people in this part of the country secretly long to go back to are the days when the Klan was riding high or when Quantrill was terrorizing the people of neighboring Kansas, or when Dred Scott was losing his famous court case. For sure, there is a streak of that ugly sentiment in the Trump phenomenon.

But I want to suggest something different: that the nostalgic urge does not necessarily have to be a reactionary one. There is nothing un-progressive about wanting your town to thrive, about recognizing that it isn't thriving today, about figuring out that the mid-century, liberal way worked better.

For me, at least, that is how nostalgia unfolds. When I drive around this part of the country, I always do so with a WPA guidebook in hand, the better to help me locate the architectural achievements of the Roosevelt years. I used to patronize a list of restaurants supposedly favored by Harry Truman (they are slowly disappearing).

And these days, as I pass Trump sign after ~ Thomas Frank

crystals and low-grade inflammation can persist in the joint during this period.23 Once an initial acute gout attack has occurred, further attacks are likely to follow. Recurrent attacks of acute gout often lead to chronic tophaceous gout, in which monosodium urate deposits (tophi) form in the soft tissues, usually along the rim of the ear, over the elbow joint, and in the joints of the fingers and toes. Tophi reduce the growth and viability of bone cells (osteoblasts),24 and if left untreated, tophaceous gout can lead to significant joint erosion and loss of function.22 ~ Life Extension

I feel like you learn how to do school in second grade through fifth grade. During those years, I was never home. ~ Dakota Johnson

Silver mining in the United States didn't start, like hard-core, until the mid-1850s," Louis said. "And only really got big when the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859 in California."

"It was bad work. Dangerous. Like any mining. But silver also lets out fumes when it's mined. Even Pliny the Elder wrote about how harmful the fumes were, especially to animals. You know Pliny the Elder?"

"The problem with the silver fumes," Louis continued, "is that, over time, they gave the miners delusions. Bad enough that they had to stop mining. Their health deteriorated. And a bunch of them even died." Hard to make fun of something like that, so Pepper didn't. "Do you know what people would say, in these mining towns, when they saw one of these miners falling apart? Walking through town muttering and swinging at phantoms? They said the Devil in Silver got them. It became shorthand. Like someone might say, 'What happened to Mike?' And the answer was always the same. 'The Devil in Silver got him.' " Louis sat straight and crossed his arms and surveyed the table. "Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?" "You're saying we're just making this thing up," Pepper said quietly. Louis seemed disappointed. He dropped his hands into his lap and folded them there. He looked at his sister and Pepper. He turned his head to take in the other patients gathered with their family members there in the hospital. "I'm saying they were dying," Louis said. "They definitely weren't ~ Victor LaValle

By the time I was in fourth grade, the teacher had already called my parents more than once to say they did not think I could tell fantasy from reality. I could tell. I could. I just didn't want to. I don't want to, I don't want to, I wailed, marched out to the hallway bench. Again. ~ Leigh Alexander

On the second and the third night there was again a ball -- this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous seas fringed with mourning silvery foam. The Devil, who from the rocks of Gibraltar, the stony gateway of two worlds, watched the ship vanish into night and storm, could hardly distinguish from behind the snow the innumerable fiery eyes of the ship. The Devil was as huge as a cliff, but the ship was even bigger, a many-storied, many-stacked giant, created by the arrogance of the New Man with his ancient heart. ~ Ivan Bunin

I kind of fell into acting, but I have sung and trained since I was in the eighth grade. ~ Tia Carrere

I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all."

"Wow," I said. "Did the search pay off?"

"That's the hard part," said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. "I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough."

"Waiting for the perfect love?"

"No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for."

"I'm not sure that has anything to do with love," I said with some amazement.

"It does," she said. "You just don't know it. There are time in a girl's life when things like that are incredibly important."

"Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?"

"Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. "Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To ~ Haruki Murakami

Attention: deep listening. People are dying in spirit for lack of it. In academic culture, most listening is critical listening. We tend to pay attention only long enough to develop a counterargument; we critique the student's or the colleague's ideas; we mentally grade and pigeonhole each other. In society at large, people often listen with an agenda, to sell or petition or seduce. Seldom is there a deep, open-hearted nonjudgmental reception of the other. And so we all talk louder and more stridently and with a terrible desperation. By contrast, if someone truly listens to me, my spirit begins to expand. ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

In every corridor Parwana would see men's eyes snapping to attention when Masooma passed by. She saw their efforts to behave matter-of-factly, but their gazes lingered, helpless to tear away. If Masooma glanced in their direction, they looked idiotically privileged. They imagined they had shared a moment with her. She interrupted conversations midsentence, smokers mid-drag. She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups. Some days it was all too much for Masooma, as if she was almost ashamed, and she told Parwana she wanted to stay inside all day, wanted not to be looked at. On those days, Parwana thought it was as though, somewhere deep inside, her sister understood dimly that her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head. Most days, however, the attention seemed to please her. Most days, she relished her power to derail a man's thoughts with a single fleeting but strategic smile, to make tongues falter over words. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Happy Valentine's Day, baby. No matter what, Gavin will always be your little boy. The first woman he ever asked to marry him. Even when he's in fifth grade and those little bitches pull out the big guns and start getting boob jobs and vaginal rejuvenation surgeries. ~ Tara Sivec

Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. The continuing cry for "basic skills" practice is a smoke screen ~ John Taylor Gatto

I've always been a late bloomer. My body developed late. From ninth to 10th grade, I grew like 3 inches. Just kind of stretched out. I was like 6-1, grew to 6-4 in 10th grade. ~ Paul Pierce

Ronan pointed at the cart. "Get in there."
"What?"
He just continued pointing.
Adam said, "Give me a break. This is a public parking lot."
"Don't make this ugly, Parrish."
As an old lady headed past them, Adam sighed and climbed into the basket of the shopping cart. He drew his knees up so that he would fit. He was full of the knowledge that this was probably going to end with scabs.
Ronan gripped the handle with the skittish concentration of a motorcycle racer and eyed the line between them and the BMW parked on the far side of the lot. "What do you think the grade is on this parking lot?"
"C plus, maybe a B. Oh. I don't know. Ten degrees?" Adam held the sides of the cart and then thought better of it. He held himself instead.
With a savage smile, Ronan shoved the cart off the curb and belted towards the BMW. As they picked up speed, Ronan called out a joyful and awful swear and then jumped on to the back of the cart himself. As they hurtled towards the BMW, Adam realised that Ronan, as usual, had no intention of stopping before something bad happened. He cupped a hand over his nose just as they glanced off the side of the BMW. The unseated cart wobbled once, twice, and then tipped catastrophically on to its side. It kept skidding, the boys skidding along with it.
The three of them came to a stop.
"Oh, God," Adam said, touching the road burn on his elbow. It wasn't that bad, really. "God, God. I can feel my teeth."
~ Maggie Stiefvater

A tomb is a vault, a vault is a home," Mr. Sadlot said casually sniffing the flower in his lapel. "That's where the deceased chose to reside and that is where he will be placed." Kekaju and the Hidden Swamp ~ Robert W. Sweeting

While I was deep in my fantasy, in yet another episode of perfect timing, Marlboro Man called from the road.
"Hey," he said, the mid-1990s spotty cell phone service only emphasizing the raspy charm of his voice.
"Oh! Just the person I want to talk to," I said, grabbing paper and a pen. "I have a question for you--"
"I bought your wedding present today," Marlboro Man interrupted.
"Huh?" I said, caught off guard. "Wedding present?" For someone steeped in the proper way of doing things, I was ashamed that a wedding gift for Marlboro Man had never crossed my mind.
"Yep," he said. "And you need to hurry up and marry me so I can give it to you."
I giggled. "So…what is it?" I asked. I couldn't even imagine. I hoped it wasn't a tennis bracelet.
"You have to marry me to find out," he answered.
Yikes. What was it? Wasn't the wedding ring itself supposed to be the present? That's what I'd been banking on. What would I ever get him? Cuff links? An Italian leather briefcase? A Montblanc pen? What do you give a man who rides a horse to work every day?
"So, woman," Marlboro Man said, changing the subject, "what did you want to ask me?"
"Oh!" I said, focusing my thoughts back to the reception. "Okay, I need you to name your absolute favorite foods in the entire world."
He paused. "Why?"
"I'm just taking a survey," I answered.
"Hmmm…" He thought for a minute. "Probably steak."
Duh. "Well, besides steak," I said.
"Steak ~ Ree Drummond

Once you were just insentient cells, no more aware of anything than your liver is now. Today you are brimming with consciousness. How did you make the grade? What catapulted you into consciousness? There must be some kind of natural process behind this astonishing leap, but this process is obscure. ~ Colin McGinn

I think generally I'm a pretty good person if I had to grade myself. Or toot my own horn. ~ Kid Rock

By the mid 1920s the typical American town was in full sexual bloom. The change came with erotic fashions, literature and movies, and an unsuspected sexual aid, the automobile. ~ John Leo

My mom gave me a good piece of advice. She said never marry a man thinking you can change him, and I think that starts from your first date when you're in the seventh grade onwards. Women are fixers so we have to just not fix. Don't fix. ~ Jennifer Garner

How I hate this silk dress
that conceals a poet.

Written in the mid 9th century by a brave woman poet. Even then, even now, what is seen externally does not always define our journey. ~ Yu Hsuan-Chi

Where some people defined their years by grade,I defined mine by the book that changed me the most that year. ~ Dave Connis

Each year, in my quaint efforts to send out paper holiday cards with personal messages, I probably discard one for every three I actually manage to put in the mail. The reason is that my handwriting is now less legible than it was when I was in the second grade. ~ Meghan Daum

Crosses?"
"Definitely"
"Why?"
"Because they're evil, soulless, bloodsucking fiends?"
"So was my sixth-grade gym teacher, but he wasn't afraid of a cross. ~ Rachel Caine

The Cold War went on for so long that it bred a kind of worldwide military establishment. Even when budgets went down in the early and mid-nineties, it didn't really affect it. ~ Robert D. Kaplan

If grade inflation continues, a college bachelor's degree will have just as much credibility as a high school diploma. ~ Walter E. Williams

I'm always trying to push the envelope and go with a different hairstyle that you're not going to see on anybody else. I have a really good grade of hair, and I can do a lot of different things with it. ~ David Otunga

Around mid-life everyone goes maniac a little bit. ~ Tom Berenger

I liked this girl in my sixth grade class. I dared her to kiss me
but she didn't! ~ Justin Bieber

After the Cold War ended, there was an agreement between the former Soviet Union and America to convert weapons-grade nuclear materials into reactor-grade materials. So disarmament and nuclear energy actually are strongly linked. ~ Susan Eisenhower

I suppose the more established one gets, you have what's called a reputation, and so you want to protect that and preserve that. And I think the bravery really comes in one's mid career where you then are constantly trying to move beyond that and move past that, because those so-called successors can become shackles. ~ Cate Blanchett

Three dominant hypotheses explain what drives plate tectonic motion. Each one relies on the convention of the mantle - the movement of heated rock materials beneath earth's crust - but each one focuses on a different piece of the cycle: Mantle convection hypothesis: This hypothesis proposes that heated materials inside the earth move up and down in a circular motion (like the wax in a lava lamp) and the continental plates resting on this mat-erial are moved in the direction of the circular motion. Ridge-push hypothesis: This hypothesis states that the creation of new rock materials along mid-ocean ridges continually pushes oceanic crustal plates upward and outward, so that the far edges are forced into collisions with other plates. Slab-pull hypothesis: This hypothesis is the opposite of the ridge-push model. It proposes that the heavy, dense outer edges of crustal plates sink into the mantle at plate boundaries and pull the rest of the plate along with them. ~ Alecia M. Spooner