It was cold out there, bitter, biting, cutting, piercing, hyperborean, marmoreal cold, and there were all these Minnesotans running around outdoors, happy as lambs in the spring.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.

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.

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

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

I'm not any kind of social reformer.

You can't travel the back roads very long without discovering a multitude of gentle people doing good for others with no expectation of gain or recognition. The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines. Some people out there spend their whole lives selflessly.