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.

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.

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

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

I used to think that driving, sleepless, ambitious labor was what you needed to succeed.

We always take credit for the good and attribute the bad to fortune.