When you look at my campaign, I don't go around sugarcoating things.

I tell you how I feel and how we're going to solve it. That's my unique personality and that's how I carry myself. It is different from most people, but when something comes out of your mouth, people tend to listen more.

It's been in the back of my head for five or six years, but more on the local level to get involved and try to create a better environment for my children and grandchildren.

The biggest change we have to tackle that's out there is that we're digging the hole deeper and deeper and spending is totally out of control. And that's something that, quite frankly, is affecting future generations. You're giving a lot of debt to them and you can't keep doing it. It's not helping anybody.

I hardly ever think about audience. I just try to tell a story for me. I write the kind of story I would like to read.

I write in a rush of memory.

Now I'm trying to work outside first person. I do plan to write more books.

I didn't have my own journals, but my mother kept a journal while I was in the hospital, and my father wrote newsletters to keep friends and family updated on my progress.

Maybe I would have become an actor. I was a very outgoing kid, but being in the hospital - being outside of social action for so long - turned me into an observer. Actually, right after I got out of the hospital, I did start writing a novel, but the book was so transparently about me that I stopped.