Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.

Most of those old settlers told it like it was, rough and rocky. They named their towns Rimrock, Rough Rock, Round Rock, and Wide Ruins, Skull Valley, Bitter Springs, Wolf Hole, Tombstone. It's a tough country. The names of Arizona towns tell you all you need to know.

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.

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

When I worked in Los Angeles covering hard news, very often when something important would happen I'd be off in the woods covering something unimportant, which was more interesting to me.

I much preferred the peaceful life on the road, where I didn't have to ask embarrassing questions and do all the things real reporters have to do.

I think all those people I did stories about measured their own success by the joy their work was giving them.