The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.

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.

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.

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.

Just by luck, I picked good heroes to worship.

I have spent a good part of my life looking for the perfect barbecue. There is no point in looking in places like Texas, where they put some kind of ketchup on beef and call it barbecue. Barbecue is pork, which narrows the search to the South, and if it's really good pork barbecue you are looking for, to North Carolina.

Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people.... We are a nation rich in rivers.