I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way actually. That was a very subversive activity because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher people loved it.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature I just wanted to do something else.

I must have got my detailed obsessive streak from my father who was an English teacher because my mother wasn't like me at all.

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.

I'm embarrassed every time I look a teacher in the eye because we ask them to do so much for so little.

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.

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent a teacher an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

More negatives write than call. It's a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic.

It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

This sympathy is not translated into force against the British government because it is not like the anti- apartheid movement which had a high profile here and Mandela is a more engaging figure than Yasser Arafat.

They weren't impatient for the boys to turn into cartoons again. They awarded sympathy gave compassion. Because deep down they had found parts of themselves in the characters. You said it George.

Because I select my players from a feeling that comes to me when I am with them a certain sympathy you might call it or a vibration that exists between us that convinces me they are right.

I have a theory because I was being beaten up a lot by people outside of school it was almost like if I could make myself sick enough they'd take sympathy on me.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

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.

I've always liked Saturn. But I also have some sympathy for Pluto because I heard it's been downgraded from a planet and I think it should remain a planet. Once you've given something planetary status it's kind of mean to take it away.

Nothing fails like success nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant Cause.

People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.

It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.

If the film is a hit then everyone shares the success. If it is going to be a disaster then it might as well be because of me not because of somebody else.

I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going to move beyond a certain level of role. And I was - because I had graphic instances of it - handicapped by the success of Star Trek. A director would say 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' - and this was compounded by X-Men as well.

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

To win in Australia for me has to be the ultimate success because the Aussies live for sport.

I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.