I didn’t read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

I wasn’t allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

I’d like to think I’m a great teacher.

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

I was a sociology major. And it had nothing to do necessarily with law, which is ultimately – I went to law school. But what I tried to do was choose something that I was passionate about or something that I cared about.

A teacher should have a creative mind.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn’t have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

People tend to think that because I’m a performer and I don’t go to a regular high school that I haven’t personally been affected by bullies. But it’s actually quite the contrary.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

This thing comes to me, not by the hearing of the ear, but by my own personal experience: I know of a surety that Jesus manifests Himself unto His people as He doth not unto the world.

I’ve had everything pierced at some point.

Except for the title ‚father,‘ there is no title, including ‚vice president,‘ that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator.

I mean, I went to a Catholic boys‘ school for a year, but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.

Some of the kids in school used to call my father a fake or a phony. That kind of thing brought on a few fights.

My dad is a great writer. Naturally talented, naturally charming. He embodies that back-in-the-day cool.

From my earliest childhood, my attention was specially directed to the subject of acoustics, and specially to the subject of speech, and I was urged by my father to study everything relating to these subjects, as they would have an important bearing upon what was to be my professional work.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

I grew up in New Orleans. I had just moved into my dorm at the University of New Orleans, and I was doing laundry, and my mom called me, like, ‚We’ve got to evacuate. There’s a hurricane’s coming.‘

I don’t do research. I never have.

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

I can honestly say – and it’s a big surprise to me – that I have never had a dream about being on the moon.

I wasn’t going to shy away from getting married when I did and having a baby young and starting a family, even with the job that I chose.

All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher,‘ ‚Prophet,‘ ‚Really nice guy’… this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you’re left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nut case. You have to make a choice on that.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything… to know what’s going on so I can feel like I’m in control.

My father wasn’t a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher – one of those Victorians, hard as iron – but my dad was tough enough.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero.

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship – and you know what, a father does, too. It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‚Mad Men‘ episode.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

People are always coming up to me and saying, ‚I heard your dad’s speech, and it’s really great.‘ And they’ll mention some place I didn’t even know my dad was going to.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

My father was a research scientist in tropical medicine, so I always assumed I would be a scientist, too. I felt that medicine was too vague and inexact, so I chose physics.

On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education.

At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

A lot of preachers‘ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

My mother was born in Baltimore, and before her marriage, she was an artist and teacher of art.

I believed in God when cancer come to me. Now when I speak, I speak with authority because I’ve been there.

I became a journalist because one didn’t have to specialise.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.