I remember the mentoring experiences of some teachers that I had like a second term home room teacher in public school that really was very helpful to me.

When I had my first voice lesson I was 15 years old. And I had a really good teacher. This is what made all the difference. A good teacher will teach you the technique but also how to listen to your voice.

I think there are so many ways to become interested in music. I believe signs of sustained interest gives a sense of the right time. Music if thought of as a language would perhaps indicate that as early as possible is not so bad. I do believe that a really nurturing first teacher that makes the child love something is crucial.

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.

As a teacher at Princeton I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel in one sense is a problem-solving exercise.

He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was - I wouldn't say the 'guru' - but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.

I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. This one chemistry teacher she liked hanging out. I liked making explosives. We would stay after school and blow things up.

Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know.

I thought well of course Kinsey absolutely adored teaching. He was a wonderful teacher. So these kids really inspired me. So that was a clue I hung onto. He loved young people he absolutely loved them. And he loved teaching them and trying to help them.

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.

Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.

My overnight success was really 15 years in the making. I'd been writing songs since I was 6 and playing in bands and performing since I was 14.

Everyone applauds each other's success in Hollywood because they know how tough it is but it really comes down fundamentally to the process.

I think that my biggest attribute to any success that I have had is hard work. There really is no substitute for working hard.

We just want to win. That's the bottom line. I think a lot of times people may become content with one championship or a little bit of success but we don't really reflect on what we've done in the past. We focus on the present.

To this day most people think of me as the fastest human. They don't really think me as a long jumper although that's the event I had more success in.

Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaida or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaida. That's really the measure of success for the United States.

Look if you ask a child 'Would you rather have a fulfilled mother or a stay-at-home Sylvia Plath ' they'll pick Sylvia Plath every time. But I think it's really important that children don't feel their parents' emotional lives depend on their success.

Success sometimes can really bite you in the shorts.

I think the success of a talk show depends on how true it is to the personality of the person hosting it. The shows I really admire like 'Oprah' and 'Ellen ' are distinctively like their hosts so I think my show will be successful only if we try to stay consistent to my own sense of myself.

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.

When people stand up and talk about the great success that the EU has been I'm not sure anybody saying it really believes it themselves anymore.

The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic but you never really enjoy success.