My Favorite (Ridiculous) Murray Quotes

I teach little in class, a great deal in conference. My students write every week and I read what they write overnight and am ready to confer the next day. That's the way it has to be. I don't teach my students in a bunch any more than my doctor can give everyone in the waiting room the same pill. (Letter to David W. Ellis, 10/9/1972, Folder: Murray (Annual Reviews)--and other materials)

A teacher of surgery must cut, a violin teacher must fiddle and a teacher of writing simply has to write so he can demonstrate to his students as well as talk about them. (Letter to David W. Ellis, 10/9/1972, Folder: Murray (Annual Reviews)--and other materials)

In a sabbatical report he wrote several years later, Murray joked “My folks started me out in life to be a boy evangelist. I rejected that to find myself becoming a sort of educational evangelist.”

I am happiest when making imaginary worlds; I am still the only child whose playmates live in the walls. ("Revision: In the Writer's Workshop and in the Classroom" p. 44)