WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Actor, author and Parkinson's disease activist Michael J. Fox spoke with CNN's "Larry King Live" to be aired Thursday.



Michael J. Fox: "I still travel with my kids, and I'm with them part of the day, every day."



In the interview, Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991, talks about his new book, which he describes as "a memoir of the last 10 years." In it, he explores the nature of optimism.



He also talked about his family, a new approach to acting and President Obama's lifting of a ban on stem cell research, among other things. Here are some excerpts from the show.



Larry King: He's founder of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. He's a best-selling author -- the new book is "Always Looking Up." By the way, he has got an ABC special, "Michael J. Fox: Adventures of an Incurable Optimist." It airs on May 7. You remain -- is it easy to be an optimist?



Michael J. Fox: Well, for me it's second nature. It's just the way I look at life. And it's certainly a challenge now for most people to be optimistic, obviously, with all of the troubles we have and the problems that the country is facing.



But I think it's exactly in those times when our optimism kicks in highest gear. I think -- there's an expression that I like that I always use: "Don't wish for a lighter load, wish for broader shoulders." And I think that people are really -- I see a lot of broader shoulders these days, people are really working on the delts, you know?



King: What was it like when you were diagnosed?



Fox: Well, you know, it's hard to describe it, because I was so young, I was 29 years old. And so Parkinson's is not what you expect to hear. I had a twitch in my pinky and I figured it was some kind of nerve damage or I'd done something probably athletic. ... But then I got this diagnosis, and I thought the guy was kidding. And then it was shock, and then I had a certain amount of fear and I started to react to it in certain ways. I started drinking more heavily as a way of self-medicating it.



And it took me -- you know, it's funny, because I sit and talk about "Always Looking Up" and being optimistic, and accept the losses and move on or find new gains, but it took me about seven years, I think, to really get to the point where I could tell people about it. ... I was diagnosed in '91, and it wasn't until '98 that I admitted publicly that it was a situation I was facing.



King: It is not life-threatening, is it?



Fox: No. And I would say you don't die from it, but you -- up to now, you'll definitely die with it if you have it. ...



King: Why did you write the book?



Fox: The book was -- I wrote the first book because I had to, I think I had to kind of tell that story just for myself, just kind of to acknowledge all of the work that I had done on getting through that journey.



And then this book was -- I thought about writing another, and I thought about people responding so positively to the optimism in the first book. And so many people wanted to talk to me about that.



So I thought, well, optimism: What is optimism? And so I started to think about it more kind of empirically, writing a book about optimism as a subject, and interviewing researchers about it and talking to people who are optimistic and traveling to places where people are optimistic and all of this stuff. ...



So I had to kind of tell it -- I couldn't tell
Who gratified Obama? What was Fox gratified with Obama for? Who did research?
Michael J. Fox lifting of a ban on stem cell research, Michael J. Fox
question: Who gratified Obama?, answer: Michael J. Fox | question: What was Fox gratified with Obama for?, answer: lifting of a ban on stem cell research, | question: Who did research?, answer: Michael J. Fox