You know, most reporters can't go back to the towns they wrote stories about. I never wrote that kind of story.

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter. I don't know where I got the idea that it was a romantic calling.

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.

You never heard anybody ask 'Elvis who?'

I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.

It's that enthusiasm, that passion for what you're doing, that is most important.

It is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country?