A good teacher must know the rules a good pupil, the exceptions.

I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It's a process, and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be, but we're losing a little bit of that right now.

I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.

What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher.

In other words, if a teacher only teaches in one way, then they conclude that the kids who can't learn well that way don't have the ability, when, in fact, it may be that the way the teacher's teaching is not a particularly good match to the way those kids learn.

I'm blessed with a good pair of ears. That's how I fooled my piano teacher. I'd watch his fingers and I'd listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.

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

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.