It was so much fun to have the freedom to wander America, with no assignments. For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment. These were all stories I wanted to do myself.

It's best to leap into something you know you love. You might change your mind later, but that is the privilege of youth.

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.

I had a tight stomach all the time. I actually developed ulcers. I've learned better than to put all that internal pressure on myself.

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.

I don't think one should ever come to my stage of life and have to look back and say, Gosh. I wish I hadn't spent all those years doing that job I was never really interested in.

It takes an earthquake to remind us that we walk on the crust of an unfinished planet.