The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way.

Most African women are taught to endure abusive marriages. They say endurance means a good wife but most women endure abusive relationship because they are not empowered economically; they depend on their husbands.

Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other's good, and melt at other's woe.

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

It was just normal for me growing up with a family member with severe Down Syndrome. It was completely normal. She was just Auntie Linda. I loved her and she loved me. She had a spirit that was just positive. For me it taught me tolerance and acceptance of all human beings.

I don't have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I'm happier now than before I developed the condition.

I don't have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.

I can walk into a room and create a good ambience. I was taught all about this back when I studied acting. One of the things they would teach you is how to send out positive signals when you enter a room. I am glad I learned this.

As the daughter of a civil rights leader, I believe in the power that compels people to stand up for their freedoms, for justice and opportunity. I know that marching inspires people to take an active role in creating positive change for a better America.

I had many teachers that were great, positive role models and taught me to be a good person and stand up and be a good man. A lot of the principals they taught me still affect how I act sometimes and it's 30 years later.

Stage fright is not a thing about 'Am I any good?' It's about 'Am I gonna be good tonight?' It's a right-now thing. It helps me. If I went out there thinkin', 'Eh, we'll go slaughter 'em,' I'm positive something would go seriously wrong.

My father taught my siblings and me the importance of positive values and a strong ethical compass. He showed us how to be resilient, how to deal with challenges, and how to strive for excellence in all that we do. He taught us that there's nothing that we cannot accomplish if we marry vision and passion with an enduring work ethic.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.

The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.

Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.

I was extremely close to my dad. I think all daughters are very, very close. But I'm the youngest in the family and I think I was my father's pet. So I was the closest to my dad.

My biggest pet peeve is when you go to a fine restaurant, and it's like a mausoleum inside. Good food should be joyful. There should be laughter and chatter, not people sitting there like they're in a funeral-parlor waiting room.

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.

Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don't think about yesterday, and they don't think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment.

My friends wonder how I have the patience to engage with people on Twitter about topics such as diversity and why black British history should be taught in schools: surely it's exhausting? And they're right.

Chess taught me patience.