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.

When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don't honor them enough, we don't pay them enough.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

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.

The first books I was interested in were all about baseball. But I can't think of one single book that changed my life in any way.

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

America is a great story and there is a river on every page of it.