To read the papers and to listen to the news... one would think the country is in terrible trouble. You do not get that impression when you travel the back roads and the small towns do care about their country and wish it well.

I'm not any kind of social reformer.

When I worked in Los Angeles covering hard news, very often when something important would happen I'd be off in the woods covering something unimportant, which was more interesting to me.

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

That was the overwhelming thing to me, the joy of carrying my portable typewriter to an event and trying to describe it.

We always take credit for the good and attribute the bad to fortune.

There is melancholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass