The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky, because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.
Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.
I think it is important that you have people from all different vanguards, from all different walks of society and different viewpoints to be focused on the struggle for equality and democracy. We need as many champions for the cause and as many even...
There comes a day when you've become comfortable in your skin. But God as my witness, I am going to try to do everything I can to keep this ass together for as long as I possibly can - without going against nature.
I think the World Cup is going to be bigger than what a lot of people are anticipating. At this stage in my career, when there is an opportunity, albeit a small one, of being on the team, what a great way to possibly end my career.
One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was p...
There is a glacier in Iceland, Solheimar, which has retreated a great deal, and every time I go back there and see what's not there any more, it does something to the heart. It makes you realise it's possible for a gigantic natural element to just di...
I'm going to become the best-remembered artist of my generation by staying away from the party as often as possible. That way, people will remember me, not because I was great, but because I didn't cause them any later embarrassment.
We live in a world where sports have the potential to bridge the gap between racism, sexism and discrimination. The 2012 Olympic Games was a great start but hopefully what these games taught us is that if women are given an opportunity on an equal pl...
For much of history it was possible to believe that the great diversity of life on Earth was a fixed creation, that the living world had never changed. But when the first stirrings of industry demanded that fuel be dug from the earth and hillsides be...
We wanted to make a powerful cello sound in order to show to the world the possibilities of the cello and to use it in a different way than the classical way they are used to. We wanted to play something exciting, something crazy, something to draw y...
We were never happy with the way cello was recorded, and we wanted to experiment in the studio to make the cello rock as much as possible. On the second album, we had great help from Bob Ezrin, who helped us develop our sound even more.
Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along.
I believe music is like medicine. Like a good tonic, it can open your mind, strengthen and possibly even cure you. Music can work on many levels, and nothing I know of possesses the healing force that exists within music.
I never thought I want to do anything, really, except not go to work properly and turn up at the same place every day and eat sandwiches in the same canteen, if I can possibly help it, as I don't think I'd be very good at it.
I was a good 30 pounds overweight throughout high school, and it wasn't until I was going away to college that I really wanted to make sure I was doing everything possible to feel as confident as I could.
To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail f...
Every school should have well-rehearsed emergency response protocols covering a variety of possible scenarios, from fire to armed intruders. Schools should have good lines of communications with local emergency response officials and practice those r...
I think, 'How could anybody mock a good pop song?' It is timeless; it transcends barriers; it breaks down every single type of social barrier that you can possibly have. It can deal with the most difficult subjects, even if it abstracts the subject m...
Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.
Sleeping with your phone in your bedroom is never a good idea, but it's even worse when you're bullied online because it's too tempting to stay up all night trying to 'fix' the situation - which isn't possible anyway.
