Someone said to me... ‘A criticism is just a really bad way of making a request. So why don’t you just make the request? Why don’t you just say, Could we work out this thing that makes me feel this way?’

The Center for Public Integrity is the real thing. A group of dedicated people who remember that great journalism is about grit and guts and stamina and razor-sharp instincts. They are, thank heaven, here to stay.

I have a contract but it's not a commitment in the ordinary sense. It's our ongoing conversation.

I'm always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact.

People assume you can't be shy and be on television. They're wrong.

I have a liberal definition of news because I think news can be what excites people. I'm not very sanctimonious about what news is and isn't.

I read once, which I loved so much, that this great physicist who won a Nobel Prize said that every day when he got home, his dad asked him not what he learned in school but his dad said, 'Did you ask any great questions today?' And I always thought, what a beautiful way to educate kids that we're excited by their questions, not by our answers and whether they can repeat our answers.