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.

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 made friends with a lot of those who could have criticized me in print and who didn't, who praised me instead.

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

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

When I was a little boy I used to borrow my father's hat, and make a press card to stick in the hat band. That was the way reporters were always portrayed in the movies.

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