Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among which one's lot is cast; a profession which seems as dim and faraway and unreal as the shores of Europe.

Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.

I became a writer in spite of my environments.

But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.

It's good to get good marks, but some students take it on their heart when they score less in future. But the average student, on the contrary, keeps on trying to do something or the other to achieve his goals.

Over the years, I've worked for and alongside the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association. That's because I am proud of our public school teachers - including my niece who teaches down in Louisiana - just as I am proud of our nation's education system.

Delayed gratification is a sweet lesson whose teacher knows the best is not right now, it is yet to be.

We need balance. We need to balance our inner life with our outer life. Nature is always sitting there waiting to help us, but we have to do the work. Nature is probably the greatest teacher that we'll ever have... the earth and nature.