Ironically for a few million people in the Far East I did become an English teacher through my music.

There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul or in a magic that acts on it through speech.

I was attending the University of Alberta. I was going to be a high school teacher like my parents. I failed - no I didn't fail a class I just barely passed. I really didn't try. It was Canadian history through the plays of the time. My God those were boring plays.

I never had to learn English French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters seeing the world through their eyes.

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic ludicrous side of it and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

I have sometimes been wildly despairingly acutely miserable racked with sorrow but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

It's nice being brought up with no money at all. It's just not how I measure success so that makes it a bunch easier.

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.

I did not become successful in my work through embracing or engaging in celebrity culture. I never signed away my privacy in exchange for success.

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that for you to gain those you deal with should gain as well.

With 'Believe' bringing really big success for me outside of the U.K. for the first time it meant I have been touring around the world and that led to a gap from the studio. I really feel like the gap has done me the world of good. Throughout that time I was able to collect songs that I really loved.

I feel lucky because I was a nerd which I talk about in the book but I had academic success so through that because that's what my parents put a great deal of value on I had a great childhood because I sort of fulfilled the expectations of being good at school.

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.

My success and my misfortunes the bright and the dark days I have gone through everything has proved to me that in this world either physical or moral good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good.

If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling the confidence in success which not seldom brings actual success along with it.

Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan in which we must fervently believe and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.

This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work - they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night perhaps.

You can manage 50 people through the strength of your personality and lack of sleep. You can touch them all in a week and make sure they're all pointed in the right direction.

We must continue to pursue peace through diplomacy but we must also not shrink from our responsibility through the option of strength. We must take advantage of internal resistance and change from within Iran to avert this path of mutual destruction.

I think everybody faces challenges in their lives. I've definitely been through it - not to the extreme that Astrid did. I try to keep some kind of identity and strength.