It doesn't matter how much wisdom you have. If you don't have position, you have nothing. That's the tragedy of India.

Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.

We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.

Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.

My book 'Trust Your Heart', which is the story of my life, will be followed by 'Singing Lessons', a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing, which talks about the death of my son and the hope that has been the aftermath of the healing from that tragedy.

The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the skies and encouraged parochial Americans to go out and see the world.

In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is.

I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.

On Thanksgiving I will stop to give thanks that my family is safe and healthy, especially because I realize that, following the tragedies of this year, it is all too real a possibility that they might not have been.

It's ironic that when you go through a tragedy, you appreciate more. You realize how fragile life is and that there are so many things to still be thankful for.

My mother, a teacher, encouraged me to use my creativity as an actual way to make a living, and my father, a Mississippi physician, did two things. First, he taught me that all human beings should be treated equally because no one is better than anyone else, and he never pressured me to become a doctor.

I took Spanish in high school and I didn't do too well in it. My Spanish teacher told me not to go on with Spanish anymore, so I was discouraged a little bit.

I was strongly encouraged by a science teacher who took an interest in me and presented me with a key to the laboratory to allow me to work whenever I wanted.

I had an art teacher who's the reason I got there in high school who encouraged me to go to Alabama. That's where she had gone and kept raving over their art department.

I was studying with Stella Adler, who was a great, great teacher who encouraged me to be an actor. I had thought I would just write or direct or whatever. I wasn't thinking very much of Hollywood. I was thinking only of the legitimate theatre. But then I changed.

Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It's much too strict, but it's a hell of a teacher.

I discovered Deborah Ellis's books in the school library after my head teacher encouraged me to go beyond the school curriculum and look for books I might enjoy.

I was the only one in my family to be musically inclined, and my mother loved that. It encouraged my grand aunt to find me a music teacher, because it was quite obvious music was in me.

When people think of the word 'drive,' they often think you have it or you don't, and that's where we're wrong. Drive is something that can be encouraged by a wonderful teacher, by a terrific classroom environment, by an awesome soccer team that you are on, and it can be squashed as well.

I had a horrifying experience but what the world fails to understand is that the handicapped need no sympathy, they need to be encouraged in whatever they do.

Sometimes, in the midst of a tragedy like the Newton massacre, we witness incredible acts of valor, tenderness, grace, and decency. We saw it from Sandy Hook Elementary School's teachers, students, and parents, as well as from their community and country. The outpouring of sympathy and help has been touching and, at times, inspiring.

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, abortion is a tragedy. Our principle objective must be to try and win greater sympathy for that perspective and for the value of human life from its beginnings.

If I'm feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer.

The worst tragedy that could have befallen me was my success. I knew right away that I was through - cast out.