There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.

A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society's heroes.

If someone needs help, I don't do tea and sympathy, but I'm honest and practical - that's how I was brought up.

Pretty much all the drivers I get on with, at least to say 'Hi' and have a conversation. But when the helmet's on, you don't care who it is. You have no sympathy: someone blows an engine in front of you, if it means you gain a position, then you're smiling.

Any sympathy won for Aileen Wuornos based on a lie is not sympathy at all. The question is, can we have sympathy for the circumstances of someone's life? That's what I was interested in.

I can't understand why someone wouldn't have a degree of sympathy for people that had to flee their country, travel to try and find their home somewhere, and nobody wants them. How could you not be a little bit sympathetic?

I don't think it's an incredibly radical premise to try and have sympathy for someone who has made a mistake.

There's something very beautiful and compelling about someone who has ambition and someone who knows what they want, but it can get a little frustrating at times, so I understand that. I have sympathy for that.

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.

Okay, so, sometimes in life, I can be a score-keeper - someone who keeps track of what he gives and what he gets in return. An annoying quality, to say the least, and I'm sure my wife has your sympathy, but it's made me highly attuned to when and where credit is due.

People do not realise that if they say something negative about someone, it turns into positivity for the person they are speaking badly about because they get sympathy.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Monetary success is not success. Career success is not success. Life, someone that loves you, giving to others, doing something that makes you feel complete and full. That is success. And it isn't dependent on anyone else.

The grass is always greener on the other side - until you get there and see it's AstroTurf. Symbols are never reality. Someone might have amassed material success and fame, but that doesn't mean they're happy. So, don't go judging a person's life by the cover.

The worst part of success is to try finding someone who is happy for you.

The opponents and I are really one. My strength and skills only half of the equation. The other half is theirs. An opponent is someone whose strength joined to yours creates a certain result.

I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked.

Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy. Marilyn Monroe, because she was a curvy woman. I'm drawn to things that have the same kind of silhouettes as what she wore because our bodies are similar.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

It was a really interesting thing to explore, the strength it takes for someone to stay when they truly do not want to be on this Earth anymore.

Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy.

I am not someone like A. B. de Villiers, Gayle, or Dhoni. I don't have that much power. I have to use my brain to manipulate the field and stick to my strength, which is to hit through the lines.