A Quote by Anh Do

When I was a kid in year one and year two, I had troubles with reading and writing, and my mum took me to St. Vinnies and we bought this big box of second-hand books, and she worked with me to turn that weakness around, you know.
We [me and my wife] went back to St. Paul, worked for a year - again, I guess I would have to admit now, doing a rather shaky job of teaching people - but at the end of that year we returned to England and worked in the [Bernard] Leach Pottery for two and a half years.
I had amazing intellectual privilege as a kid. My mom taught me to read when I was two or three. When I was five, I read and wrote well enough to do my nine-year older brother's homework in exchange for chocolate or cigarettes. By the time I was 10, I was reading Orwell, Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and the Koran. I was reading comic books, too.
My mother was almost entirely responsible for my cultural education. She took me to the library once a week, and by the age of seven, I was reading 100 books a year.
It's stimulating to teach a new course. To teach a course three times in a row is, I think, about the maximum for me. On the second year - you know, the saying is that first year you learn how to teach the course, the second year you do it right, and the third year you're coasting and you had better move on to something else.
Half of my mum's family is Welsh. I remember when I was a kid she used to read to me, and witches and wizards in books always had a Welsh accent, so I guess I took it from that really.
Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about 'Wind in the Willows' and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought - you know about 'The Wind in the Willows.'
The Chinese tell time by 'The Year of the Horse' or 'The Year of the Dragon.' I tell time by 'The Year of the Back' and 'The Year of the Elbow.' This year it's 'The Year of the Ulnar Nerve.' Someone once asked me if I had any physical incapacities of my own. 'Sure I do,' I said. 'One big one - Jim Palmer.'
My senior year at College Park, University of Maryland, I took an elective class in crime fiction taught by Charles C. Mish. He turned me on in a big way to reading and books. I was lucky to have a teacher who changed the course of my life.
My wife, she is so good. She was a famous singer - had a show in Carnegie Hall, did a big city tour for RCA. Then she made the mistake of marrying me. The next year, another tour, but the third year, she had Mario and said, 'Either I'm a mother or a singer.'
The first year was hard for me to deal with. The second year was a little bit easier, but still difficult. It took me five years to get it out of me. It was a difficult moment, a difficult time.
This mum comes up, she's got a five-year-old kid and she says, 'Can he have your autograph, you are his favourite person in the whole world.' I thought, 'How cool is that? I've got five-year-old fans,' and as I'm signing this autograph, the mum goes, 'Yeah, yeah, you're by far the best Wiggle.'
It's true - my mother kicked me out the house at 14. I had to go live with my sister. I had some problems. I was very rebellious as a kid. I don't even know why or where it came from, but I had a lot of anger. Me and my mom clashed a lot because she didn't tolerate that, as she shouldn't from a 14-year-old.
As good as that first year in Ring of Honor was, the second year was really, really bad for me. In retrospect, it was great for me, but at the time, it was a tough situation to be in. I didn't have anyone around to mentor me where I needed to be.
When I got to college, my sister was starting work, and she realized she had two weeks of vacation a year, so she called me and said, 'Go abroad.' So right after my freshman year, I went and I studied in Guatemala, and I studied in Kenya, and I studied in Italy, and it was incredible.
Mum was in her early 50s when she had four strokes in quick succession that almost took her off. I'd just come down from Cambridge with a rubbish degree. I spent a year reading to her - her eyesight was badly affected - and making sure she got proper rest. It was a special time but very intense, too.
When I was eight, my mum found me humming to myself and scribbling on a scrap of paper. When she asked me what I was doing, I got shy. I was writing a Christmas song, and I had never shared my music with anyone before. Reluctantly, I sang it for her... and she loved it. Of course she did - she's my mum.
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