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.

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

I'm not any kind of social reformer.

You know, most reporters can't go back to the towns they wrote stories about. I never wrote that kind of story.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

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.

I'm not knocking the wholesale grocery business or any other, but there is a kind of romance in journalism which some people, the lucky ones, feel inside them all their lives.