Following my junior year in high school I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber a young language teacher from Roosevelt.

Ironically for a few million people in the Far East I did become an English teacher through my music.

There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul or in a magic that acts on it through speech.

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.

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters seeing the world through their eyes.

I have sometimes been wildly despairingly acutely miserable racked with sorrow but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

Well I believe that the depth of your struggle can determine the height of your success. I was inspired to come out of everything I've been through and end up in a place where I never thought that I would be.

I did not become successful in my work through embracing or engaging in celebrity culture. I never signed away my privacy in exchange for success.

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that for you to gain those you deal with should gain as well.

With 'Believe' bringing really big success for me outside of the U.K. for the first time it meant I have been touring around the world and that led to a gap from the studio. I really feel like the gap has done me the world of good. Throughout that time I was able to collect songs that I really loved.

I feel lucky because I was a nerd which I talk about in the book but I had academic success so through that because that's what my parents put a great deal of value on I had a great childhood because I sort of fulfilled the expectations of being good at school.

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.

My success and my misfortunes the bright and the dark days I have gone through everything has proved to me that in this world either physical or moral good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good.

If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling the confidence in success which not seldom brings actual success along with it.