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Antonia Novello
Former Surgeon General of the United States
I always remembered coming down a stairway once when I got an "A" in Spanish 12 by a teacher who never had given an "A" to anyone. And, as I came down through the steps running to tell my peers, which were five, they were talking without them knowing that I was listening, and they said, "I bet you that Tonia is going to have an 'A' because (her mother) Miss Flores talked to Mr. Hernandez." That really put it into the perspective. That was junior year. It only motivated me to be better. So, what I did is I studied so hard from there on that I took the entry examination to college in my junior year rather than my senior year, with the hope that, if I failed, I still had one year to catch up. And, to my surprise, I was the highest grade in the school.
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Antonia Novello
Former Surgeon General of the United States
When the call came, I said, "But I am not interested. I'm not looking for a job." He said, "Well, the Secretary of Health will call you, and you have an appointment on Monday." Grudgingly, I went and I thought I knew the agency, so I took the budget, the people who work in it, the mission, and I read it over the weekend because, I was going to tell him no. But the thing that I learned, too -- even when you say no, be prepared for them to want you because you're good.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
Later on, when I was trying to justify having an academic education, and wanting to apply the performance gift, whatever it was -- then I did study. I did think very carefully about the role of the director. I read a great deal of director's memoirs. I read a book by Tyrone Guthrie that hugely influenced me, inspired me. And, I have done ever since because I really enjoy discovering how other people deal with the contradictions. The thing is, there is very little formal training for being a theatre director. There's a little bit more for being a movie director. There are film schools. Most theatre studies places don't actually accommodate directors or have a program for them. Certainly not in England they don't. In a way, I sympathize with that because there is something unteachable about it. Really, what you're doing is putting into professional play the way that you relate to other people, the way that you analyze and relate to a written text, the way that you would persuade anybody to anything. It's to do with listening. It's to do with humility and a sense of yourself.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
The first theater that I went to was a vaudeville house, and the great experience was hearing the band striking up. I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera. I've never wanted to categorize them, or to feel that they should be done by different people, different specialists. I've never believed in that. So, when I was at university, I suppose this was expressed through the fact that there were two famous societies at Cambridge. One of them was called the Marlowe Society that did all the classical plays. And the other was called the Footlights, and they did the musicals and the revues. And in my last term at Cambridge I did both productions. I did the Marlowe Society and the Footlights. I directed both of them.
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Joyce Carol Oates
National Book Award
I always tell my students the same thing. And that's to live life, and to read very voraciously without any definite program. To travel, to meet people, to talk to people, to listen very carefully, and not interrupt, but listen to their own grandparents speak of their families. Because older people in our families have so much to tell, and you just have to sort of inspire them and they start telling you. So to be very curious, and to take a kind of neutral position and not to be judgmental, just kind of open. You know, look at the world and see what's there. It's very beautiful. It's a very exciting but in some ways treacherous world, and all this goes into the writing.
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