True Notebooks

Since starting the class two years earlier, I'd had plenty of opportunities to wonder: What is the value of a positive experience if it is only temporary? How do you weight the advantages against the disadvantages of affection, or of aspiration? After all I'd been through with the boys--some of it wonderful and some of it terrible--all I could say was that a little good has got to be better than no good at all. That, I wrote Kevin, was my answer to his question of why I went there: not because I always enjoyed it, and not because the boys always enjoyed it, but because most of us seemed to agree that it was a good thing to do.

~page 323, True Notebooks by Mark Salzman

I copied this quote when I first read True Notebooks sophomore year of college. Found it in my journal this fall and was inspired to reread the book as a teacher. I'm finally returning the book to my friend and flipped though, just to find the quote again.