We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.

When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989 my first piano teacher sent me something that I'd composed when I was four. I remember I played it and it still sounded like me. I'm the same composer I was then.

We can not wait until we have enough trained people willing to work at a teacher's salary and under conditions imposed upon teachers in order to improve what happens in the classroom.

I've always been too hard on myself to behave like I've arrived or even to enjoy whatever success I've had. I've always envisioned myself higher than where I was and I still do. With each success I think 'That's nice but I'm supposed to go there!'

I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.

In America as opposed to the old country success was based on merit.

Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going through it.

Our strength is often composed of the weakness that we're damned if we're going to show.

I love sport I grew up playing sports that's all I did and it is so invigorating now that I'm supposedly adult to learn something completely new from the bottom up.

The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles.

All of us in society are supposed to believe that cruelty to animals is wrong and that it is a good thing to prevent needless suffering. So if that is true how can meat be acceptable under any but the most extraordinary circumstances such as perhaps roasting the bird who died flying into a window?

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.

Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite and those who have more appetite than dinners.

The fidelity question is difficult for me. Society has made us believe we're supposed to be monogamous when we're not killer whales or whatever the monogamous species is.

A system that was originally designed to support the poorest in society is now trapping them in the very condition it was supposed to alleviate.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.

People need to understand that the Lauryn Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at the time. I had to step away for the sake of the machine. I was being way too compromised. I felt uncomfortable having to smile in someone's face when I really didn't like them or know them well enough to like.

I've always loved 3D. In fact as a kid I was exposed to 3D at an early age because my grandfather was a specialist of 3D in cinematheques. And then my cousin put it in 'Science of Sleep' with toilet paper tube cities. But he was a specialist and I always wanted to do something in 3D.

We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it as opposed to the business potential.

I mean I was just one of the ones who got exposed and because of the position I was in where I was in my life it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless that could have been avoided.

And for some reason when I'm sad I do listen to Leonard Cohen I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood as opposed to sticking on Motown which might actually bring my mood up.

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.

Is Valentine's Day a day to make cupcakes with your children? No Valentine's is supposed to be a day about romantic love.

I played it right because that's what you're supposed to do - play it right and with respect.