Clay Aiken

Well, there are certain words and emotions I don't want kids hearing, and I'm not changing because they think it's going to sell better. This is going to sound horrible, but I got 12 million votes doing what I did.

When I - when I was going to school, I knew how to read, write, add and subtract and I - I basically said, 'What else do I need? I'm never going to be able to go to college. I'm not going to be able to afford to go to college. I'm not going to be able to get a scholarship.'

By the end of the millennium, despite the continuing excitement of the field, almost thirty years of a detour from chemistry to medical imaging began to pall, and I changed my focus to a field of chemical research, just in time for my past to catch up with me in the form of a Nobel Prize. All detours should be so productive!