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Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.

I could have been a rich kid who stayed in college and got by on the path of least resistance, but I got much more out of being in the world and pulling my own weight.

I was just a regular kid in poverty, struggling.

I grew up in poverty and my mother had to sacrifice a lot for us to eat and get an education - just imagine in a house where we were more than six children! But hard work and dedication is what it took for me to be here today.

I grew up in an era of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a very big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there simply wasn't enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.

I grew up in a family in which no male upstream from me had ever finished high school, much less gone to college. But I was taught that even though there was nothing I could do about what was behind me, I could change everything about what was in front of me. My working poor parents told me that I could do better.

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid.

I grew up with no money. No money. I always struggled and had the sense that there was this other class of people who went to college - this was when I was younger.