For the kids, who in their lives have never known the slightest power, delinquency is a way of looking for power.

What I wonder is what would happen in California, say, if all the Mexicans left from one day to the next?

The best translators slip into the glove of a text and then turn it inside out into another language, and the whole thing comes out looking like a brand-new glove again. I'm completely in awe of this skill, since I happen to be both bilingual and a writer, but nevertheless a lousy translator.

Investigative reporting is the bone structure without which the journalistic body collapses. The Center for Public Integrity's constant and consistently enterprising investigative work is an invaluable contribution not only to journalism, but to society and to a healthy democracy

I'm an efficient, good, professional reporter. But I also write. And so what I try to do is write about places that I know that I care about intensely and write about them in a way that conveys the fact that I care.

I may not have a practical mind, but it's very fixated on concrete things. I like detail.

There is no point to samba if it doesn't make you smile.