Steven Spielberg: Directing and Dyslexia
“I just knew that I dreaded going to school.”
Dyslexia.
I didn’t have a name for it.
I just knew that I dreaded going to school.
Because if I was called on
And told to stand in the front of the class
And read from the book in the third grade,
That day would be another long day,
In a long series of the worst days of my life.
We’re talking about the 1950s.
There was nothing.
There was not a program.
There were not books being written.
There was nothing about dyslexia.
All they could do was assume
That I wasn’t studying hard enough,
That I wasn’t reading,
That I was perhaps,
Lazy.
But I never felt like a victim.
That was the important thing:
I never felt like a victim.
Movies helped me.
Saved me from shame,
From guilt,
From putting it on myself
When it wasn’t really my burden.
It wasn’t my burden.
In light of feeling like an outsider,
Movies made me feel inside
My own skillset.
— Steven Spielberg
Friends with Quinn Interview (2007)