I made my drama teacher cry. I only took drama to get out of writing papers in English and the teacher was this thespian Broadway geek and here I was this Italian guy from Staten Island and I would put her in tears.

When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'

When I was a teacher teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

I never wore a tie voluntarily even though I was forced to wear one for photos when I was young and for official events at school. I used to wrap my tie in a newspaper and whenever the teacher checked I would quickly put it on again. I'm not used to it. Most Bolivians don't wear ties.

I think there are so many ways to become interested in music. I believe signs of sustained interest gives a sense of the right time. Music if thought of as a language would perhaps indicate that as early as possible is not so bad. I do believe that a really nurturing first teacher that makes the child love something is crucial.

I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

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.

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

I would probably be a teacher if I weren't a comedian.

He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was - I wouldn't say the 'guru' - but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.

I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.

I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. This one chemistry teacher she liked hanging out. I liked making explosives. We would stay after school and blow things up.

My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar.

Teachers make a difference and we would serve our students better by focusing on attracting and retaining the quality teachers by raising teacher pay.

If I'd stayed at college I would have become a teacher.

I would suggest that teachers show their students concrete examples of the negative effects of the actions that gangsta rappers glorify.

There's a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration's problem which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous.