"I took Sheba's failure to forge an instantaneous friendship as an encouraging sing. In my experience, newcomers - particularly female ones - are far too eager to pin their colors to the mast of any staff room coterie that will have them." Chapter 1, p. 18

"For a novice like Sheba - a wispy novice with a tinkly accent and see-through skirts - the potential for disaster was great." Chapter 1, p. 21

"I have never been physically drawn to any of my pupils, of course, so I may not be the best person to assess the boy's charms, but I rather think that if my tastes had run in that direction, I would have fixed upon someone a little prettier: a delicate-boned, downy-faced boy in the lower school perhaps." Chapter 2, p. 27

"We might not have fretted much about our children's souls in the old days, but we did send them out...