Perception is reality.
Lee Atwater
My childhood, adolescence and high school days are unusually important. If there has ever been a time that I developed a uniqueness and sense of humor and the ability to organize, it was then. In those early days, I developed the skills that gave me a certain degree of success in American politics.
My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything.
Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn't with me as against me.
Just keep stirring the pot, you never know what will come up.
It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.
I think I learned pretty early that in the end, it's only you. To an extent, you're all alone.
I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.
Most of the time I was in grammar school through high school, I was in some kind of rock n' roll band. I would say that at least 80 percent of my energy was involved with whatever band I was involved in.
