I much preferred the peaceful life on the road, where I didn't have to ask embarrassing questions and do all the things real reporters have to do.

What I learned on the road. Above all else - to love my native land.

I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.

I have spent a good part of my life looking for the perfect barbecue. There is no point in looking in places like Texas, where they put some kind of ketchup on beef and call it barbecue. Barbecue is pork, which narrows the search to the South, and if it's really good pork barbecue you are looking for, to North Carolina.

...Pomeranians speak only to Poodles and Poodles speak only to God.

It's best to leap into something you know you love. You might change your mind later, but that is the privilege of youth.

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.