I grew up in a small, strictly-Catholic fishing village on the coast of Wales. The people there have a different attitude to life than those in Hollywood - people stick together more.
The whole world is global. With the Internet, it's like we're all living in a small village. We're starting more and more to realize there is no difference, we can work together, we can put aside our differences and work on our similarities and be successful in that way.
Now if you are condemned to life on welfare, I'm not so sure that being in a bigger welfare village is that much better than being in a smaller welfare village.
The organization I founded in 1993, Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education), was in large part inspired by the generosity shown to me by a community in a village in Zimbabwe. During my visit to Mola to research girls' exclusion from education, the people of Mola fed me, shaded me, walked and talked with me for hours each day.
Scotland's relationship with Malawi is perhaps unique - with almost every town or village in Scotland having some connection.
I was described as a dreamer, a fantasist, even as the village idiot. I didn't care. What I cared about was convincing people to allow me to go on with my work.
I would often take this bus and go to a nearby village where I had hordes of animal friends. I was hardly around four or five years old then. The conductor was so used to seeing me hop on to the bus and get down at the same place, that he never asked any questions. The strangest part is, he never asked for a ticket either!
The Haisla named this point Obela. Not so long ago, the bay was lined with longhouses and canoes, totem poles and fishing gear. The reserve was once a winter village, a place to celebrate the sacred season, when memories passed in dance and song and stories from one generation to the next with great feasts called potlatches.
I grew up reading the 'Village Voice' and wanting to be one of these multidisciplinary music writers, film writers, book writers. And I lucked out getting a job at the 'Voice' right after college.
I grew up on the South Island of New Zealand, in a city chosen and beloved by my parents for its proximity to the mountains - Christchurch is two hours distant from the worn saddle of Arthur's Pass, the mountain village that was and is my father's spiritual touchstone, his chapel and cathedral in the wild.
I divide my time between all the mud and open space in Surrey and the social life and work in London, particularly Chelsea, which still has the same village feel that it had in the swinging Sixties.
I could never muster the courage to speak to girls in my college in Pune. Most of them were Parsis and spoke English. I came from a village and could barely converse in English.
When I moved to the East Village in the late seventies, I wanted to be a street performer, so I practiced daily. I never did work up the skills or the courage to perform on the street, though.
I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.
My daughters all have aunties who help out. It takes a village.
One day, I'll disappear and hide in a corner of Britain. I'll own a bakery in a village, live above it, have a big garden because I like mowing. I want to get up when I feel like it, let people queue for my products, and when they're gone, shut the shop and think about tomorrow. Creating magic - that's my dream. And I'll do it.
It takes a village to raise a child; that's how I basically balance it. It's twenty four hours in a day.
In 1978, when I was a non-Congress chief minister, we distributed surplus wheat among labourers. Later, when we visited a village, I asked a labourer whether he knew who sent the wheat. 'Yes, Indiraji - only Indiraji helps the poor.' Indiraji was a symbol for the weaker sections.
You know, Greenwich Village was the traditional bohemia of New York. I wish I could say that was entirely true now. It's, uh... changed. It's now got, God help us, investment bankers and journalists, but it's still a very beautiful part of New York.
A rebel. That was me when I was younger. What was a rebel from New Jersey? A rebel was moving to the Village, not sleeping with top sheets, not eating a hot breakfast in the morning, not having 20 rolls of toilet paper and 10 boxes of Kleenex.
The Star City community - because it's not a big city, actually; it's only 14 big houses, and everybody knows each other. It's like a small village, and I felt that somehow everybody wants to help me, especially during days when my father flew, and somehow care about me, and it was really great time, you know.
Our village was built on the Ohio River, and was a halting place on this great national road, then the only avenue of traffic between the South and the North.
I think part of picking where you live in New York is accepting who you are. Really looking at yourself and going, 'Yeah, I'm not cool enough for the West Village.'
I have nothing against romance. I believe that we must hold on to the right to dream and to be romantic. But an Indian village is not something that I would romanticize that easily.
The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village.
