When I was in junior high, a foreign-history teacher started a theater class. So I got my feet wet there and through high school, so I was very fascinated with acting as a means of expression.

I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old could write that well. I was even punished because my teacher thought I'd lied about writing it! I had always loved to write, but it was then that I realized that I had a talent for it.

I grew up in Rome, in actually what I would say was a liberal, open-minded family. My father was an architect and my mother was a teacher of art history, so it was sort of intellectual, and maybe a bit much for me when I was a child.

I see myself as, first and above all, a teacher of history; next, a writer of European history; next, a commentator on European affairs; next, a public intellectual voice within the American left; and only then an occasional, opportunistic participant in the pained American discussion of the Jewish matter.

I was attending the University of Alberta. I was going to be a high school teacher, like my parents. I failed - no, I didn't fail a class, I just barely passed. I really didn't try. It was Canadian history, through the plays of the time. My God, those were boring plays.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a teacher, a history teacher. After all, teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor, in a way. It takes a great deal to get, and hold, a class.

This is what I would have done if I had to have a real job: I would have been a history teacher.

In the fourth grade, my history teacher gave us a project: Why was the auto industry located in Detroit, Michigan? I didn't know I was going to be an economist, but I knew I was going to do something that was involved in answering questions like that one because I thought that was a fascinating question.

I had a great drama teacher in high school, and that's when I started to learn about the history of theater.

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.

I think my parents were happy that I'd gone to university and gotten a degree in history so they thought, 'Well if acting doesn't work for him, he can always become a history teacher or something.' Fortunately, the acting worked out.

My father was my main influence. He was a preacher, but he was also a history and political science teacher, and since he was my hero, I wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a teacher.

My dad was such a great story-teller, a good teacher.

I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students.

The wonderful drama teacher at my high school, Barbara Patterson, saw me standing in the hall and told me I should audition for 'West Side Story.' I guess she thought I looked like a gang member.

I remember being in a history lesson and saying to my teacher, 'How come you never talk about black scientists and inventors and pioneers?' And she looked at me and said, 'Because there aren't any.'

As a kid, I had this ultimate goal to be a teacher. I wanted to be a history teacher like my dad.

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

TV is bigger than any story it reports. It's the greatest teaching tool since the printing press.

Those who peacefully gather to express sympathy for the family of Michael Brown must have their rights respected at all times. And journalists must not be harassed or prevented from covering a story that needs to be told.

It's important to find characters that share sympathy with a young audience, not just in the story but their role in the world.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

AI don't make a big thing out of my race. If you try to preach, people give you a little sympathy and then they want to get out of the way. So you don't preach; you tell the story.

Too often, we get attention and sympathy by being a victim. If we're invested in someone being our villain, we must love being the victim. We have to let go of both characters in the story.