At art school, a teacher said: 'The best paintings are when you get lost in a piece of work and start painting in a stream of consciousness.' I wanted to do music, not art, so started writing lyrics that way. The first song I wrote was called 'Ice Cream and Wafers.' The next was 'Holding Back the Years.'

I'm very involved with kids because after being a teacher for seven years, I just can't stop loving the kids. I am a teacher forever.

Prior to going to college, I had a pretty strong accent, and that was one of the things I had to work on a lot. I went to North Carolina School of the Arts; my speech teacher... that was one of the things we really had to work on over the years, and thankfully I think it finally worked.

There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.

In the depth of the near depression, that he faced when he came in, Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress provided 'recovery funds' that literally kept our classrooms open. Two years ago, these funds saved nearly 20,000 teacher and education jobs - just here in North Carolina.

When I had my first voice lesson I was 15 years old. And I had a really good teacher. This is what made all the difference. A good teacher will teach you the technique, but also how to listen to your voice.

For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.

I was born 50 years after slavery, in 1913. I was allowed to read. My mother, who was a teacher, taught me when I was a very young child. The first school I attended was a small building that went from first to sixth grade. There was one teacher for all of the students. There could be anywhere from 50 to 60 students of all different ages.

Christine Bass was my high school music teacher. She took a program on its last legs and within a few years turned into one of the best programs in the country. Our high school dominated national choir competitions all through her 20-plus year tenure.

My mother was an elementary school teacher for 35 years and taught at the Nixon School in New Jersey. I was raised as a very liberal Democrat, and she was protesting Nixon when he was in office.

My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.

How would you deal with it if you're 9 years old, people are telling you, 'You suck,' and they don't give sympathy? They don't feel bad for you because of who your dad is.

I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy.

I have several close friends who are insomniacs. Over the years, I've heard their stories about being up in the middle of the night, completely awake. I see them yawn at 11 A.M. and know that, regardless of what they are doing, they'd probably rather be in bed sleeping. I've always had sympathy for them, but I've never really understood it.

Our late Leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, with his universal sympathy for all oppressed and his profound understanding of Jesus' revolutionary spirit of love and sacrifice, carried on his revolutionary work for forty years and brought about at last the liberation of the Chinese people.

Queen Paola and I will never forget the ties that have grown between the people and us during the course of the years. Thank you for your confidence, tokens of sympathy and support, sometimes even with a little criticism. We always loved you.

Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

You know, it's nice being an overnight success after 50 years.

It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

About 10,000 years ago, males and females were acting equitably and were treating one another as equals, and then males took over the power, because they have physical power and physical strength.

I was ironing my own clothes when I was 11 years old. My mental strength goes back to those days.

If I don't make heritage visible and the strength of mother tongue important for my grandchildren, it scares me that they might say in 20 years from now, 'Well, it is rumoured that we used to be Africans long ago.' And in many urban areas, it's already happening.

I was in uniform for four years, and I know that heroism doesn't occur from taking orders, but rather from people who through their own willpower and strength are willing to sacrifice their lives for an idea.