The Mississippi River carries the mud of thirty states and two provinces 2,000 miles south to the delta and deposits 500 million tons of it there every year. The business of the Mississippi, which it will accomplish in time, is methodically to transport all of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.

I was on the high school track team, believe it or not, and played baseball, poorly but passionately.

The greatest thing you can do in life is to tell a young boy or girl that they're 'the very best' at something - baseball, reading, art. That gives them the wonderful feeling that they can do anything, which they can!

In television, everything is gone with the speed of light, literally. It is no field for anybody with intimations of immortality.

Since my retirement, I've spent a lot of time trying to help the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina. A society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens.

What I learned on the road. Above all else - to love my native land.

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.