The secret to understanding me is I'm not trying to be anybody other than who I actually am. People want candid refreshing leadership. And I've always tried to go with solutions. You know I've always tried to say here's how we get our economy growing here's why we get our debt under control. That's what Mitt Romney is offering.

Growing up in Nashville especially in a music business family means growing up with knowledge that seems like common sense until later in life when you realize people spend thousands of dollars a semester trying to learn or pretending to learn while looking for some intern job on music row.

The whole Twitter phenomenon is really indicative of what's happening in this country. And I say this in condemnation of myself as much as anyone else - we are growing into a nation that has no time desire or capacity for truth. All we can handle is 140 characters of knowledge.

If I had to come up with something that just came to me I think growing up in a small town I want knowledge. I still think today knowledge is one of the keys.

Basically I was a rebel growing up. I got kicked out of six schools. But I don't think that it makes you less of an intellect. You know if you ever crave knowledge there's always a library.

I gained direct knowledge of the life of the poor in big towns: I have lived the narrowing mechanism of its conditioning and feared it.

When it came to political power blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness in a way fosters the imagination. But growing up Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

Growing up I didn't have a lot of toys and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately but write from recollection and trust more to the imagination than the memory.