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.

I didn't know what narcissism was until I beheld my own naricssus.

When I was a little boy I used to borrow my father's hat, and make a press card to stick in the hat band. That was the way reporters were always portrayed in the movies.

It was so much fun to have the freedom to wander America, with no assignments. For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment. These were all stories I wanted to do myself.

For a while there, I was a stringer. The expression comes from the old habit of stringing together the column inches that you had written. They'd measure it and pay you 10 cents an inch for your printed copy.

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.

I used to think that driving, sleepless, ambitious labor was what you needed to succeed.