Prolific author Stephen King made a speech at the Vassar College commencement on May 20, 2001. He entitled it "Scaring You to Action" and told how two years earlier he had been lying in a ditch by a country road, seriously injured after being hit by a van as he walked beside the road in June 1999. "I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you're lying in the ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard."

On that day and in the following months, he got a painful but important insight into many of life's simple truths: "We came in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we're just as broke."

Of all the power most Americans have, King said, "the greatest is undoubtedly the power of compassion, the ability to give. We have enormous resources in this country…but they are only yours on loan, only yours to give for a short while…. I want you to consider making your lives one long gift to others, and why not? All you have is on loan anyway. All you want to get at the getting place, from the Maserati you may dream about to the retirement fund some broker will try to sell you on, none of that is real. All that lasts is what you pass on. The rest is smoke and mirrors."

King invited the audience to imagine a typical American backyard, with mom, dad, and the kids enjoying a delicious barbecue next to their swimming pool. "And standing around that fence, looking in, are emaciated men and women, starving children. They are silent. They only watch."