Writing can give full meaning to characters and avoid pure stereotype.

Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers.

I think stutterers are funny. And I know it's rude and politically incorrect to laugh at stutterers. But I think it is okay because I know why they're funny. They make people nervous. People think, when on earth are they going to get the word out, so they start laughing out of their own nervousness.

So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy - being the thing that I should be most interested in - and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn't hack the senior class.

Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.

If you live in an oppressive society, you've got to be resilient. You can't let each little thing crush you. You have take every encounter and make yourself larger, rather than allow yourself to be diminished by it.

I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.