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.

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.

I can't say that I've changed anybody's life, ever, and that's the real work of the world, if you want a better society.

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

I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.

Just by luck, I picked good heroes to worship.

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