I don't think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.

There is melancholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass

The Mississippi River carries the mud of thirty states and two provinces 2,000 miles south to the delta and deposits 500 million tons of it there every year. The business of the Mississippi, which it will accomplish in time, is methodically to transport all of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.

It takes an earthquake to remind us that we walk on the crust of an unfinished planet.

You can't travel the back roads very long without discovering a multitude of gentle people doing good for others with no expectation of gain or recognition. The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines. Some people out there spend their whole lives selflessly.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people.... We are a nation rich in rivers.