A married vicar is likely to regard his vocation as a job - a tough and ill-paid one, to be sure - but a priest is seen as a pillar of the community, answerable only to his parishioners and his God, rather than to a wife and children.

British diplomats who worked in Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis are deeply upset by Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning film 'Argo,' which suggests they refused shelter to the group who managed to get out of the U.S. embassy.

I think the great thing about grandparents is seeing another home, realising that people you love can have different priorities, different diversions, different opinions and lead quite different lives from the ones you see every day, and that is immensely valuable.

I've served on five different juries, and many of them were bonkers in their own way.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

An early attempt at education choice was charter schools. These were meant to attract the best and brightest students and provide them a level of education they often could not find in their local school districts. The problem is that, of the thousands of charter schools, many are outright failures.

My mom was a teacher - I have the greatest respect for the profession - we need great teachers - not poor or mediocre ones.

All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.