Quotes from Philip Schultz

I think one's relationship with one's vulnerability is a very delicate and precious relationship. Most people try to hide, disguise that vulnerability, and in doing that, you, I think, diminish a great source of power.

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created.

Suddenly, I was reading these comics. I was looking at those bubbles, those dialogue bubbles, and suddenly there were words... recognizable words.

I never doubted my talent. If talent was the circus, then I was its ringmaster and audience, applauding its every move.

Happiness is a powerful thing. It freed me to do what I always wanted to do.

There are real facts in my poems, but facts mixed up in the perverse stubborn stew of imagination, add a pinch or two of revenge and retribution, a dash of amplification and reparation.

If I get the idea, and I get some clarity on how I feel about that idea, then I can safely assume I'll find the right words. I do have that confidence.

Most people try to avoid cliches. It's my ambition in life to try to get 'em right!

I was well into middle age when one of my children, then in the second grade, was found to be dyslexic. I had never known the name for it, but I recognized immediately that the symptoms were also mine.

I write slowly, and I write many, many drafts. I probably have to work as hard as anyone, and maybe harder, to finish a poem. I often write a poem over years, because it takes me a long time to figure out what to say and how best to say it.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to talk to me, it seemed. And not about my poetry: it was my dyslexia they were most interested in.

I'd grown accustomed to seeing myself as someone who, if fallible and unworthy, had nevertheless managed to do one thing well enough to get recognition for it.

I not only couldn't read but often couldn't hear or understand what was being said to me - by the time I'd processed the beginning of a sentence, the teacher was well on her way through a second or third.

When a child knows that he or she is dyslexic, that it's the way their brain is programmed, and it's not their fault, that makes all the difference in the world.

Failure has been the great theme of my life, I think.

I eventually just imagined being a little boy who was quote unquote 'normal': who could learn like all the kids around me that I felt excluded from. And I imagined myself into one of these and into someone who could read.

I can't remember a time when I stepped into an airport or train station without wishing I were somewhere else, doing almost anything else. Just thinking about traveling gives me the willies. Traveling and dyslexia don't really get along.

What I read, I read thoroughly and retain almost all of it.

My imagination was a great place to escape from all the anxiety and disapproval of my life... I had to live in my head... art was a way of making myself feel better.

I didn't learn how to read until I was at the end of fifth grade and 11 years old and held back.

I have to often read the same sentence over and over before I understand it. And I have to convince myself that what I'm reading is so enjoyable and so exciting and so good for me that it's worth the effort.

As a poet and a teacher, I read all the time. I know I read slowly. I like reading, but I don't read any more than I have to.

I do think that there is a profound reservoir of creativity and imagination in everyone I've ever met, and sometimes if someone is persistent and perversely obstinate enough to persevere, then they want to be helped. There is a way to help them.

Art's power of persuasion resides in the small personal details of one's own story, and if it weren't for my struggle with dyslexia, I doubt I'd ever have become a writer or known how to teach others to write.