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.

That was the overwhelming thing to me, the joy of carrying my portable typewriter to an event and trying to describe it.

Kids are always asked, What are you going to be when you grow up? I needed an answer. So instead of saying, a fireman, or a policeman, I said, a reporter.

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.

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?

I don't think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.