My mother believed in curses, karma, good luck, bad luck, feng shui. Her amorphous set of beliefs showed me you can pick and choose the qualities of your philosophy, based on what works for you.

For books I want to keep reading, it's definitely the voice. It must be a voice I've never heard before, and it must have its own particular intelligence. By 'voice,' I don't mean vernacular. It has to have its own particular history and world that it inhabits.

I have a writer's memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

Money doesn't just buy a nice car; it also buys better education or healthcare. Increasingly, it can buy impunity from justice, a pliant media, favorable laws, business advantage, and even elections. This, in turn, perpetuates the policies that allow a tiny elite to accumulate ever more wealth at the expense of the majority.

I always loved drama at school. We had a great drama teacher at my secondary school, and she made drama feel cool. She inspired me, and then I did the National Youth Theatre in London.

Could today's construction worker married to a clerical worker guarantee four children a college education and buy a house? That's what we're fighting about.

By assessing the capabilities and knowledge of students in the highest-performing and most rapidly improving education systems, the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment provides valuable options for reform and information on how to achieve it.