Normally street children are shown in terms of the tragedy of their lives - which is true - but there's also another dimension: their wisdom dignity and enormous capacity for survival.

Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom not a guide by which to live.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood it may be equally outraged by silence.

Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.

My mother a teacher encouraged me to use my creativity as an actual way to make a living and my father a Mississippi physician did two things. First he taught me that all human beings should be treated equally because no one is better than anyone else and he never pressured me to become a doctor.

I took Spanish in high school and I didn't do too well in it. My Spanish teacher told me not to go on with Spanish anymore so I was discouraged a little bit.

I was strongly encouraged by a science teacher who took an interest in me and presented me with a key to the laboratory to allow me to work whenever I wanted.

I had an art teacher who's the reason I got there in high school who encouraged me to go to Alabama. That's where she had gone and kept raving over their art department.

Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It's much too strict but it's a hell of a teacher.

The key element in tragedy is that heroes and heroines are destroyed by that which appears to be their greatest strength.

What is important is to believe in something so strongly that you're never discouraged.

You've got all these books on self help getting to know yourself doing the right thing eating the so-called right foods even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.

There is so much potential out there in young people and they aren't getting the right information or being encouraged in the right ways. This is our duty as a society.

Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged the problem is not just inside the kid it's also in the system the society.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

Usually girls weren't encouraged to go to college and major in math and science. My high school calculus teacher Ms. Paz Jensen made math appealing and motivated me to continue studying it in college.

I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.

And in this respect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy a clash between one very powerful very convincing very painful claim over this land and another no less powerful no less convincing claim.

There is no tragedy in missing a putt no matter how short. All have erred in this respect.

I spent two years in the Army. And my older brother who was also a great positive influence on me encouraged me to think about law school and I said - well I didn't have any money.

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

Getting rid of Bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods - the violent methods - that were created and encouraged by Bin Laden and others in the world.

It would behoove the world to become used to this fact: that without a just solution to the Palestine tragedy there can be no stable peace in the Middle East.

I am President of the UN created University for Peace which has a strong commitment to the relationship between peace security and the environment. I meet with young people around the world and I always come away enthused and encouraged.