I loved growing up in Canada. It's a great place to grow up because - well, at least where I grew up - it's very multicultural. There's also good health care and a good education system.

Watching myself. Watching the people around me. There was some part of me that was there as a kid and growing up and living my life, but there was also some part of me that was watching it all happen from the nosebleeds.

I'm from Canada, and I think, like everyone growing up anywhere else in the world, you are very aware of America - it sort of looms large in its legend, and so did Detroit.

I never was that boy who loved gangster films, but when I was growing up, I was obsessed with the detective Dick Tracy. It was one of my favourite movies as a kid, and he really inspired me. I would have loved to be part of that golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s. It made me want to become an actor.

The dream doesn't lie in victimization or blame; it lies in hard work, determination and a good education.

I'll never forget the day I went home and told my wife, 'I'll never be a kindergarten teacher.'

For me, learning is a continuous process and an all-inclusive one - reading a book, learning a musical instrument or learning the martial art called taekwondo. Teach myself something new - that's my prayer.

August Wilson is the one writer that writes about men like my father, who had a fifth grade education, who was a janitor at McDonald's.