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.

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.

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.

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.