I received thousands of letters of support from all around the world, all because I wanted to go to school.

Given six months to live and being the fighter that I am, I set high goals for myself.

Twice a week I would receive injections or IV's of Factor VIII which clotted the blood and then broke it down.

Rumors of sneezing, kissing, tears, sweat, and saliva spreading AIDS caused people to panic.

Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me.

Mayor Koch, of New York, was the first public figure to give me support.

Most recently my battle has been against AIDS and the discrimination surrounding it.

Eventually, I won the right to attend school, but the prejudice was still there.

I was labeled a troublemaker, my mom an unfit mother, and I was not welcome anywhere.

My family and I held no hatred for those people because we realized they were victims of their own ignorance.

I received thousands of letters of support from all around the world, all because I wanted to go to school.

My studies are important to me. I made the honor role just recently, with 2 A's and 2 B's.

Listening to medical facts was not enough. People wanted one hundred percent guarantees.

The first five to six years of my life were spent in and out of the hospital.

We began a series of court battles for nine months, while I was attending classes by telephone.

Entertainers, athletes, and stars started giving me support.

How could these people in the public eye not be afraid of me, but my whole town was?

This brought on the news media, TV crews, interviews, and numerous public appearances.

I came face to face with death at thirteen years old.

AIDS can destroy a family if you let it, but luckily for my sister and me, Mom taught us to keep going. Don't give up, be proud of who you are, and never feel sorry for yourself.

I believe in myself as I look forward to graduating from Hamilton Heights High School in 1991.

We had great faith that with patience, understanding, and education, that my family and I could be helpful in changing their minds and attitudes around.

People would get up and leave so they would not have to sit anywhere near me.

My name is Ryan White. I am sixteen years old. I have hemophilia, and I have AIDS.

Even at church, people would not shake my hand.

Financial hardships were rough on us, even though Mom had a good job at G.M.

A lot of my time was spent searching, thinking and planning my life.

On December 17, 1984, I had surgery to remove two inches of my left lung due to pneumonia. After two hours of surgery the doctors told my mother I had AIDS.

The desire to move into a bigger house, to avoid living AIDS daily, and a dream to be accepted by a community and school, became possible and a reality with a movie about my life, The Ryan White Story.

I'm just one of the kids, and all because the students at Hamilton Heights High School listened to the facts, educated their parents and themselves, and believed in me.

The school I was going to said they had no guidelines for a person with AIDS.

Lives of great men oft remind us as we o'er their pages turn, That we too may leave behind us - Letters that we ought to burn.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.

I like the storytelling and reading the letters, the long-distance dedications. Anytime in radio that you can reach somebody on an emotional level, you're really connecting.

Out all of these zillions of letters, one of the first ones that came was, as it turned out from Johnny Carson within the last five or six weeks of his life. I had worked with him. He lost a son who had worked for me.

I started getting letters from college in the tenth grade.

You know these love letters mix with whisky, just don't light a match when you kiss me.

Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

I have asked myself once or twice lately what was my natural bent. I have no doubt at all: It is to look at each day for the evil of that day and have a go at it, and that is why I have never failed to have an acute interest in each morning's letters.

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season. All great men of letters have therefore been enthusiastic walkers.

Aside from sales, the letters from readers have been primarily positive.

Judging from the letters I've received from obviously feeble-minded persons who wish I would write another These Old Shades, it ought to sell like hot cakes.

There are people who would rather choke than go see my movies. They write me letters all the time.

When I first began to combine letters other than Hebrew, I read every book in German that came my way, and from these I certainly received according to the nature of my soul.

When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters, but telegrams.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.