For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment. These were all stories I wanted to do myself. So they were always about somebody I like, 'cause if I didn't like him, I just didn't do the story. And to have somebody else paying the bills for this tourism, to every corner of every stage, over and over again? Why, who wouldn't want a job like that?

I would love to write something that people would still read 50 or 100 years from now. That comes with growing older, I think.

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

I remember being in the public library and my jaw just aching as I looked around at all those books I wanted to read. There just wasn't time enough to read everything I wanted to read.

TV critics, who traditionally hate television and make their living writing about it, often didn't like what I did on the air.

If there are bleachers in heaven and a warm sun, that's where you'll find Bill Veeck.

A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read. That's terribly troubling to me.