When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.

I’m not really an actor, I’m a reactor; I’m a pitchman. That’s what I do best. Nobody can do it any better.

I went to a lovely school, and I got an incredible education. And I actually think that my education is what really sets me apart, ‚cause I’m very smart.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

Occasionally, some brother sings very earnestly through his nose, often disturbing those around him, but it does not matter how the voice sounds to the ears of man. What is important is how the heart sounds to the ears of God.

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.

I raced with my brother from when I started to 2014 when I finished karting.

I played with two lines of action figures when I was a kid: G.I. Joe and Star Wars.

When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.

I’ve conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I’ve sang and danced at La Scala!

I think every entertainer’s had nights when things go wrong. I mean you can’t remember everything all the time, and especially if you’re having hard times personally, things going on that you – you know, and then people make it worse. And that makes you feel worse.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.

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.

I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.

When I was 8 years old, I saw ‚Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

Education is what you learn after you leave school.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin‘ hymns is a great thing to do.

I was a Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan fan growing up.

My success rate speaks for itself.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, ‚Oh, you’re playing yourself.‘ I guess it’s kind of a compliment. Or people say, ‚Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.‘ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.

I remember as a little girl going down to the beet fields in the Dakotas and in Nebraska and Wyoming as migrant workers when I was very, very small, like, I was, like, 5 years old, I believe. And I remember going out there, you know, traveling to these states and living in these little tarpaper shacks that they had in Wyoming.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

You have to stay in school. You have to. You have to go to college. You have to get your degree. Because that’s the one thing people can’t take away from you is your education. And it is worth the investment.

I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.

I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on the outside!

Until I was a teenager, I used red pokeberries for lipstick and a burnt matchstick for eyeliner. I used honeysuckle for perfume.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.

I’d love to do a musical. I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!

Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

This morning I lay in the bathtub thinking how wonderful it would be if I had a dog like Rin Tin Tin. I’d call him Rin Tin Tin too, and I’d take him to school with me, where he could stay in the janitor’s room or by the bicycle racks when the weather was good.

I’m not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living.

The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

As a kid, even I knew everything about my favourite cricketers. I used to know everything possible. Now I see kids knowing about me. It feels good.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

I liked school, but I used to dread those moments when the teacher would call me up to give an oral report. I forced myself to deal with it and not dwell on the class in front of me – to keep a straight face, give the report and concentrate on getting it right. That’s normally how I perform. That’s how I am.

As a boy, because I was born and raised in Ohio, about 60 miles north of Dayton, the legends of the Wrights have been in my memories as long as I can remember.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.

When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‚Oh, it must be so hard.‘ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.