I think I was drawn to acting just as a way of getting noticed.

My mother and father were supportive. But in an Italian family, you kind of work with your hands, or you are an engineer or a doctor. But an actor was something they couldn't get hold of. They were afraid I wouldn't be able to make a living, and for many years, they were right.

We're dream chasers. Nobody owes us our dream. But we have to chase it.

That's what I play - blue-collar Italian-Americans. You got to be typecast in order to work. I've been blessed.

I would assert that highly effective leaders are made more than they're born. Every leader I know who's been highly effective has worked hard at it, and they've been students of it. The more you're a student of leadership, the more you figure out what works for you and the more effective you're going to be.

I never intended to be a teacher, but once I started teaching, I found that junior high kids are easy to get hooked on, and I stayed for nearly twenty years.

Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States.

I go to an all-Hawaiian school, and we learn everything about being Hawaiian. We have a really deep respect for the water and the land. We say, 'mauka to makai,' mountains to ocean. I believe if you take care of the ocean, the ocean will take care of you in return.