We're understanding what Obama is. He is the great teacher. He is this guy that stands above everybody. There's some condescension in it but he stands above everybody and says 'Now listen. You people have to stop blaming each other unreasonably. You have to get along here and I am going to show you the way.' It is a pretty brave role in many ways.

My second grade teacher told me I would never graduate high school. That I was going to be a juvenile delinquent.

I was very inspired by my mother. She was a vocal teacher and sang in a band and my first memories of her were going out with her on the local circuit.

I was 20 years old working as a roofer and a telemarketer and driving a taxi just barely getting by. A friend of a friend suggested I try acting. I was like 'Why? What am I going to do? Community theater?' But I took a class and the teacher thought that I had potential so I moved to Vancouver and started auditioning.

But I was going to be a teacher my entire life so I wasn't counting on money to much.

I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal because if you lose it then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel I try and fill up notepads.

You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.

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.

NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space observe and make a journal about the space flight and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.

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.

My physics teacher Thomas Miner was particularly gifted. To this day I remember how he introduced the subject of physics. He told us we were going to learn how to deal with very simple questions such as how a body falls due to the acceleration of gravity.

I'm not going to give a courtesy gift to a person who's going to win and I'm not going to give a sympathy gift to a person who's going to lose.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

You can take Elvis. You can take Marilyn Monroe. Success and fame will not be the answer if something inside of you is bothering you if things in your mind aren't going right.

I always envisioned myself being a rapper and being in the game and having success but you never know what it feels like or how you're going to be when you're there.

Success is a process a quality of mind and way of being an outgoing affirmation of life.

I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater I was in all likelihood not going to find financial success.