Riding the Bus with my Sister 2

“‘Shakespeare says all the world’s a stage and everybody’s an actor, and that’s very true in the microcosm of the world that’s a bus. And a lot of the riders on this run are playing, like Robert Frost says, in the winter of their lives, and they’re like an open history book. Actually it's better, because you don’t get feelings in a history book. Every day right here in this seat, I have history riding with me” (Simon 39).

“‘What do you do when your a bus driver? You spend time with people and you sit and you think. I've thought all kinds of things in this seat’” (Simon 87).

“...if you fly above the world like a hawk and look down, you will see that there are no boundaries between countries, and that might make you think that there are no boundaries between people. Yet there are boundaries between people,trust me, Beth: invisible lines that separate what you want from what they can give, borders you need to respect” (Simon 93).

Riding the Bus with my Sister has been a very enjoyable book so far. Every few pages, a bus driver (or other character) is giving me a new outlook on life. Even though most of the quotes are probably not word for word what that person said in real life, Rachel Simon gets the point across that she learned something on her time riding the buses.

In the last quote, Simon is just talking to us, rather than having a bus driver talk. The quote is what she wanted to tell her sister Beth something at the time. Simon knew exactly what she wanted to teach during this book, but I found it interesting that she didn’t know what she was learning. Her sister (and the experience) are teaching her to rethink the way she sees everything. We look at Beth as if she does not act “normal” in our society, yet so far through the book, I have learned that she is clear with her persistence and knows what she cares about.

I’m not quite sure what is going to happen in the second half of the book, since she is just retelling stories about her sister and her riding the bus, but it is very enjoyable and I can’t wait to get back to reading!