Back when I was in theater school, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, 'Sweeney Todd' was a huge touchstone for me, my favorite musical for sure.
When the time came to make a decision about what do in life, I found myself thinking that acting was the thing I loved to do, so I applied to drama school. And then, I didn't get in - twice.
My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons.
In Pakistan, the right to go to school is not a given. In the more rural areas, a girl is born, married off as early as 9 years old, and basically lives life under the control of men.
Literature - novels, plays, and poems - can have an uncanny dual life, where they simultaneously represent something eternal and something historical, and this is often how they are taught in school.
I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.
Once you have done with school, you realise that it is just a smaller version of life, and really I have felt that I should have been an adult since I was aged about five.
I have always lived an ordinary life, and always will. It's who and what has to do with my job that makes it 'unordinary.' I cook, go to the supermarket, pick my children up at school.
I got out of school in 2000, and I always wanted to be on 'This American Life,' since I first started telling stories. And that, I mean, that show is a little bit of a fortress. It's really hard to get stuff on that show.
I went to boarding school, and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.
When I was 11, I realised that I did not have to live the life my mother had: school, marriage, children, apartment, summer house.
I'm strong and opinionated. Those qualities brought me a lot of problems since I was a little girl in school, saying 'I don't agree' and fighting with the children. It's part of my curiosity for life.
They used to complain at school that I looked out of the window for long periods of time - that sums up my life. I like to look out the window, do nothing, daydream.
My whole life as a grammar-school boy, getting to Cambridge University and working on the 'London Sunday Times' has been very aspirational.
Sport was an integral part of school life. The most influential teachers were not necessarily the PE teachers, but the teachers who helped me in sport because they had an understanding of what you were going through.
I have the life of Riley. I take my kids to school, do a bit of work in the afternoon, pick my kids up, microwave a meal, hang out with my kids, and work for a couple of hours.
Yes, being educated is definitely an advantage. But having said that, I've met so many people in life who haven't done very well at school but who are still really bright.
I was trying to manage school and training for the Olympics and ended up not doing well at either. That was a big lesson in my life. My mother expected both.
Do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life?
One of the things I was taught in law school is that I'd never be able to think the same again - that being a lawyer is something that's part of who I am as an individual now.
During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universit...
