I Prefer No One To Teach Me.

Every Individual Should Be Expressing Themselves, Whether A Politician Or A Minister Or A Policeman.

So Often People Will Say That I Converted To The Catholic Religion. This Is False. Although I Was Raised As A Protestant, I Was Never Baptized And Had Never Been A Member Of Any Church. I Joined The Roman Catholic Church After I Had Written My Mass To Hope!during The Night I Dreamt The Entire Lord's Prayer With Chorus And Orchestra. I Jumped Out Of Bed And Wrote Down What I Had Heard As Accurately As I Could Remember. Because Of This Event I Decided That I Might As Well Join The Catholic Church Because Someone Somewhere Was Pulling Me Toward That End.

I Wanted To Be Like My Father, Who Was A Cattle Man And A Rodeo Roper. And That Was - He Was My Hero, And I Wanted To Be More Like Him.

I Started Growing Up In A Hurry And Taking A Lot Of The Philosophy I'd Heard From Church As A Kid A Lot More Seriously - Especially The Ten Commandments - And Wondering How 'thou Shalt Not Kill' Could Be So Absolutely Ignored. It Took Me Until I Was In My 40s To Write What I Was Thinking As A Young Soldier.

My Dad Was The Manager At The 45,000-acre Ranch, But He Owned His Own 1,200-acre Ranch, And I Owned Four Cattle That He Gave To Me When I Graduated From Grammar School, From The Eighth Grade. And Those Cows Multiplied, And He Kept Track Of Them For Years For Me. And That Was My Herd.