Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.

I probably felt most out of place as a young kid growing up in Sri Lanka. My mental world was somewhere else, partly because of reading and daydreaming.

When I was growing up, I don't think I knew any other child who had been out of Sri Lanka.

Writing is incredibly important to me as a way of handling the world, understanding how it works.

If we are to negotiate the coming years safely, we may need a new kind of leadership. To put it more precisely, we need the rediscovery of an ancient kind of leadership that has rarely been given the prominence it deserves. I mean the leader as teacher.

The lopsided attitudes of college professors pose a serious challenge to learning because students are so susceptible to becoming lopsided sheep.

In the end, all new schools, public or private, snobby or not, add value to the education market, making it bigger and more efficient, in the same way that Zuckerberg added wealth to the economy even for non-Facebook fans.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.