What interests me is whatever it is that allows the heart to continue to yearn for something the intelligence knows is impossible to have: a lost love, a shelter from life's blows, the return of a time past, even a connection to the dead.

Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.

In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.

I think place and time for me is often a matter of convenience, something I can use to another end rather than something I'm trying to define because it's somehow fascinating to me in itself. It's more what the place can do for the larger goals I have for the work.

Increasingly, over the past ten years, I've come to take the view that a cultural perspective is intrinsic to the future of language teaching and learning, especially in the case of English, as it becomes increasingly global.

I confess that for fifteen years my efforts in education, and my hopes of success in establishing a system of national education, have always been associated with the idea of coupling the education of this country with the religious communities which exist.

I wish that positions of power dependent on education were as open to abused children, poor children, working-class children as they are to the children of the rich and successful. I really wish that were true.

Whether it's in Washington, or whether it's with the mothers of extremists, or whether it's education in places like Pakistan... a lot of women in these emerging countries are taking charge and doing amazing things.