In the face of technology everything becomes a little atavistic.

Sometimes I'm dazzled by how modern and fabulous we are and how easy everything can be for us that's the gilded glow of technology and I marvel at it all the time.

Why are we as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?

I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.

Gates is the ultimate programming machine. He believes everything can be defined examined reduced to essentials and rearranged into a logical sequence that will achieve a particular goal.

I loved almost everything about being a teacher but I was an unusual teacher.

Every child grows everything depends on the teacher.

When you are studying jazz the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.

I'm sure any vocal teacher that listens to me would rather cut my throat than do anything - I do everything all wrong - but I think for me that's the best - because I don't think I have a voice so I think what I project would be style - if I learned to sing I'd lose my style.

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.

For one thing I teach my students what my teacher for twenty years Paul Gavert told me 'The voice follows... the voice follows everything about you... who you are.'

As a teacher you are more or less obliged to pay the same amount of attention to everything. That can wear you down.

My younger sister had kids before I did and managed to earn a master's degree while raising them as a single parent. Now she's a brilliant second-grade teacher. I'm in awe of her ability to juggle everything and still be a great mother.

From a very early age my wife and I told our son that there are times and places for everything. I told him look when you're in class you have to be quiet and listen to your teacher but when you go out to the playground you can scream and be silly.

I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal because if you lose it then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel I try and fill up notepads.

I'm a freak everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will my jazz teacher set up everything completely flat and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.

There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black woman mother dyke teacher etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.

Study how water flows in a valley stream smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains rivers plants and trees - should be your teacher.

I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those you're being deprived of something.

Well I believe that the depth of your struggle can determine the height of your success. I was inspired to come out of everything I've been through and end up in a place where I never thought that I would be.

If there is any secret to my success I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel and therefore I think my readers care about them.

When everything happens to you when you're so young you're very lucky but by the same token you're never going to have that same feeling again. The first time anything happens to you - your first love your first success - the second one is never the same.

The secret to success is to own nothing but control everything.

The manic pursuit of success cost me everything I could love: my wife my three children some friends I would have liked to grow old with.