When I was growing up, I was told I was stupid and that I would never achieve. I suffered from dyslexia, and in those days it wasn't recognised.

I have had teachers who were brutal. If you look up 'brutal' in a dictionary, you will see their names. And I think that it's under the guise of wanting to change the actor's habit - wanting to break bad habits and replace them with brand-new ones you can use for the rest of your career.

If the country is going to be great, everybody has a gift, and I tell every child I meet, whether they have asked me or not, 'You have greatness inside you, and your job is to figure out what that is, dig it out, and give it to the world. Because the world needs everything, every one of you.'

It is the parent's job to see how their child learns and to make sure that the children's self confidence is buoyed at all times, or they will plummet like a stone.

I grew up in a house my parents built together on a mountain in Tennessee. When we moved in, the walls were still going up, we didn't have hot water, and we turned it into an amazing adventure.

I had started writing as a poet in a closed, post-Revival, claustrophobic world, where the shadows of the national upheaval and the intense effort - the intense self-conscious effort - to make a literary movement were still evident. Now we lived a life as writers that was more cosmopolitan, more open, that had more travel and exchange.

I love Fredorator and what they produce and the storytelling of 'Adventure Time'... There's such a dark, adult underlying theme underneath the whimsical, magical children's aspect of their storytelling element.

I want my life to match my work now. I don't want to work and then travel. I want to be at one place.