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.

I didn't like the competitiveness of big-time journalism.

I'm not knocking the wholesale grocery business or any other, but there is a kind of romance in journalism which some people, the lucky ones, feel inside them all their lives.

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

What you need for breakfast, they say in East Tennessee, is a jug of good corn liquor, a thick steak and a hound dog. Then you feed the steak to the dog.

Now that I look back on it, having retired from being a reporter, it was kind of romantic. It was a wonderful way to live one's life, just as I imagined it would be when I was 6 or 7.

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.