My parents always made education and school the number one priority. They believed that an education is the best gift you can give to your child.

As long as she is talented enough and passionate about doing it herself then I will be happy and support her. I think I will be sensible - my parents said I could only do it if I got my education and so I had something to fall back on.

The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.

I really owe everything to my parents and their devotion and drive to see to it that their children had the education which led to the opportunities that they never were able to have.

I was really fortunate growing up to have a broad musical education. My parents listened to all kinds of music rock soul Motown jazz Frank Sinatra everything.

Mothers unless they were very poor didn't work. Both of my parents had to leave education. My mother had to work in a cotton mill until 18 or 19 when she took some training in domestic science.

My parents had an old-fashioned ideal of college that four years at a liberal arts college should be a liberal arts education.

Most Indians go into education. Their parents just push them into education like parents in Australia push them into sports.

A lot of children like I did move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get detention worrying about letting people down your parents teachers.

Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.