![]() “The things we tell teenagers are powerful,” he says. ![]() Eight years later, the former student returned to introduce Quick to his wife and told him, “You were right about that.” Quick was touched. Quick soon forgot about the conversation, but his student didn’t. Your best friend could be out there, your life partner could be in some other high school, having all the same issues and the same problems-you don’t know who they are yet, but you’ll meet that person eventually.” Quick told the young man, “You don’t know who you’re going to meet in five years. Quick tells an anecdote about a lonely student who once approached him for advice. Connections between teachers and students matter-and linger. Quick-who left his job as a high school English teacher in New Jersey to pursue an MFA in creative writing-understands that teens want to be on equal footing with their adult teachers while still needing them to be dependable authority figures. ![]() Helping these students can save their lives, but as Leonard’s favorite teacher learns, it can also create a set of ethical questions without any easy answers. When is it time to break down those boundaries, play loose with the rules? How far do you go?” “When you have to grade 80 five-paragraph essays for kids trying to get into Harvard, and some kid comes to you with some type of crisis and is crying, which do you choose? Do you comfort that kid or do you grade the essays? Or do you comfort the kid and grade the essays and tell your wife you can’t go out that weekend? I wanted to set up that relationship as something that was challenging. “I really wanted to show that conflict,” Quick says in a call from his Massachusetts home. Just as Leonard carefully chooses whom to trust with his secrets, Herr Silverman must decide what he’s willing to do to help a student in need. But first he has gifts to deliver to the four people who mean the most to him: an elderly neighbor with whom he trades Humphrey Bogart quotes a classmate whose violin music soothes him his completely out-of-reach crush and his Holocaust studies teacher, Herr Silverman, who plays a crucial role as Leonard draws closer to what may be his final act. In Quick’s new YA novel, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, Leonard plans to celebrate his 18th birthday by using an old Nazi handgun to kill his former best friend and then himself. “If you care about kids,” he says, “teaching is the hardest job in the world.” Writing for teens simply lets him send his intended messages to a wider audience. Matthew Quick may be best known for The Silver Linings Playbook and the Oscar-winning movie it inspired, but he’s never really stopped being a teacher.
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