I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter. I don't know where I got the idea that it was a romantic calling.

America is a great story and there is a river on every page of it.

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

I would love to write something that people would still read 50 or 100 years from now. That comes with growing older, I think.

Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people. They nourish and refresh us and provide a home for dazzling varieties of fish and wildlife and trees and plants of every sort. We are a nation rich in rivers.

I wasn't a very discriminating reader. I read just about everything that came along.

The storytelling tradition that you bring from the South, I don't know where it arose, but it's still there. You can't go to the feed store, or the country courthouse without running into storytellers.