There is such a thing as a national conscience, and it can be touched.

My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.

Since my retirement, I've spent a lot of time trying to help the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina. A society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens.

The first books I was interested in were all about baseball. But I can't think of one single book that changed my life in any way.

What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well, or the bell, or the stone walls, or the crisp October nights or the memory of dogwoods blooming. Our loyalty is not only to William Richardson Davie though we are proud of what he did 200 years ago today. Nor even to Dean Smith, though we are proud of what he did last March. No, our love for this place is based on the fact that it is as it was meant to be, the University of the people.

Kids are always asked, What are you going to be when you grow up? I needed an answer. So instead of saying, a fireman, or a policeman, I said, a reporter.

The storytelling tradition that you bring from the South, I don't know where it arose, but it's still there. You can't go to the feed store, or the country courthouse without running into storytellers.