Of all the hard jobs around one of the hardest is being a good teacher.

One of the most extraordinary things about being a spiritual teacher is the rare privilege of being able to look deeply into the very souls of many human beings at the same time.

My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation.

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

If you told me when I was a teen that I would end up being a teacher I would have said you're out of your mind because quite frankly I hated school.

When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'

I love kids so two things that I have thought about are being a pediatrician or a kindergarten teacher.

Literature is my life of course but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view I like being a teacher.

Being a mother has been my greatest teacher and also the most self-sacrificing thing I've ever done.

Prior to being allowed to enter the profession prospective teachers should be asked to talk with a group of friendly students for at least half an hour and be able to engage them in an interesting conversation about any subject the prospective teacher wants to talk about.