“Soon it will be a sin of parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children.”

Between 2 and 5 I’m reading in to find out what’s been going on while I’ve been asleep.

I’m still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It’s the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

At a tiny station in New Albany, Indiana, which is right across from the river from Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. The Louisville stations were loath to hire beginners, so I had to go across the river.

The radio was my pal. I was just crazy about it.

It’s also a more personal medium. It seems to go directly to one’s brain. There are no pictures to distract.

I go home by noon, and I’m in bed by 6 p.m. I get up at 1 and do it again.

People are always ready to admit a man’s ability after he gets there.

I was encouraged to read aloud in class and vocalize.

But when you see personal artifacts relating to – by genealogy at least – a living human being, it was just more impressive to me than just about anything I’ve ever read about slavery before.

We all need that extra friend outside of our immediate family to talk about that extra stuff you wouldn’t normally talk to your parents about.

It was a mixed blessing to have famous parents. It was tough to go to auditions and be bad, since I couldn’t be anonymous.

I was an only child, a very late child, born to parents who were both 39 at the time, which was very late back then. That kind of confirmed my sense of being the center of the universe, which I guess every child feels – children and poets both tend to feel.

Parental trust is extremely important in the guidance of adolescent children as they get further and further away from the direct supervision of their parents and teachers. I don’t mean that trust without clear guidance is enough, but guidance without trust is worthless.

Because I see that as a crutch sometimes and I want to know that I can do something funny and worthwhile without that. And also make a show that my parents would like and that kids could watch with their parents.

As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn’t know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone.

My parents were really encouraging. But I had to teach them the proper way you respond to an actor after seeing a play – regardless of whether you like their performance you tell them how great they are because they have to go on again the next night.

I grew up in an non-athletic family, where my parents were interested in music, in literature, in education and art.