He [Mikhail Gorbachev] has, as many great leaders have, impressive eyes....There's a kind of laser-beam stare, a forced quality, you get from Gorbachev that does not come across as something peaceful within himself. It's the look of a kind of human volcano, or he'd probably like to describe it as a human nuclear energy plant.

Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.

Only votes talk, everything else walks.

Don't taunt the alligator until after you've crossed the creek.

I'm part of nobody's world except Brezhnev's.

I'm a believer in what your record is. I am what my record is - some of it good, some of it bad, some of it hard to tell.

Fear rules almost every newsroom in the country.