I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college as I was walking across campus one day I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done.

Well financially it's a little bit better. But it's better than than when I was a teacher. But I kind of - it's allowed me to buy a house. And I've been able to help my mother with some stuff and my brother. So that's nice.

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

My job requires me to put on a little dress and run around the streets of New York in heels. But I also had the financial means to hire a yoga teacher to come to my house while my sitter watched the newborn. For 95 percent of the world that's not realistic.

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'

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

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

There's something very beautiful and compelling about someone who has ambition and someone who knows what they want but it can get a little frustrating at times so I understand that. I have sympathy for that.

My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.