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.

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

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 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.

I think the feature reporter often walks a very thin line between a truly human story and one that slops over into mushiness or sentimentality.