I like to have a simple workplace.

My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn't realize they were learning.

I always love it when I hear back from kids who say they discovered Percy Jackson and now wear their learning difference as a badge of honour.

Even if these stories are 3,000 years old, there's still so much about the characters, about the dilemmas, about their understanding of the universe that still resonates. The whole idea of order and chaos, which is really central to the ancient Egyptian understanding of the world, is still very much with us.

Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.

It just worries me that if we start trying to erase history that we can learn from, where does that end? Do you start taking away books people find offensive? It's just a path that seems very dangerous to me in this country.

A good teacher who can take the zero pay and help kids develop physically, emotionally, socially, is literally an angel.

Here's what my CV usually does not say: I was trained as a teacher. My first job lasted less than 60 days. I was an assistant professor at a good college at Delhi University, but I found it very political, very suffocating. At the age of 23, you're not very tolerant of those things.