I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.

I lived in a town of 400 until I was like nine or ten. My dad coached all the sports - he was a gym teacher and health teacher for grades K-12.

Music is part of us and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.

Grades were important in our house. I was reading by two. My mom would sit there and read with me read with me read with me. It was wonderful.

What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school but a different way of looking at the world and learning.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

Most of the time I liked school and got good grades. In junior high though I hit a stumbling block with math - I used to come home and cry because of how frustrated I was! But after a few good teachers and a lot of perseverance I ended up loving math and even choosing it as a major when I got to college.

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?

I wasn't in school often enough to really belong to a 'clique ' but my friends all studied hard and got pretty good grades. They were good people with self-respect. I still like to be friends with people I admire something about I really believe that we become like the people we're surrounded by so I choose my friends carefully!