The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images its dreams its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination Watergate Vietnam.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

1 month ago the American people stopped to remember the third anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. We thought first and foremost of the selflessness patriotism and heroism by our troops our National Guard and Reserves.

I basically left Texas with no money. I was making $3.50 working in some mall so I didn't have a lot of cash. I took $1 000 and headed to California. Along the way I stopped in Vegas because I had always wanted to see Caesar's Palace. So I stopped there and won $2 500 on a slot machine! It was amazing.

I vividly remember being 14. That was the age when I started to get happy: I started being a writer and stopped being a loser.

Losing both parents at a young age gave me a sense that you can't really control life - so you'd better live it while it's here. I stopped believing in a storybook existence a long time ago. All you can do is push in a direction and see what comes of it.

I was a mixture of being incredibly old for my age and incredibly backwards. I was born quite old but then I stopped growing. I lived with my mum and dad till I was 30.

Thomas Jefferson once said 'We should never judge a president by his age only by his works.' And ever since he told me that I stopped worrying.