I'm not any kind of social reformer.

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

What you need for breakfast, they say in East Tennessee, is a jug of good corn liquor, a thick steak and a hound dog. Then you feed the steak to the dog.

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.

...Pomeranians speak only to Poodles and Poodles speak only to God.

I gained a great appreciation for what I would call the collective achievement of the country. I began thinking of America as a much more just and humane place than I would have thought if I'd been covering the civil rights struggle.

I had a tight stomach all the time. I actually developed ulcers. I've learned better than to put all that internal pressure on myself.