The reporter is the daily prisoner of clocked facts. On all working days, he is expected to do his best in one swift swipe at each story.

At 19, everything is possible and tomorrow looks friendly.

A reporter meets interesting people. If he endures, he will get to know princes and presidents, popes and paupers, prostitutes and panderers. And always, in the back of his head, there will be a dozen men and women he will never meet. And always, he will feel the poorer for it.

True love is night jasmine, a diamond in darkness, the heartbeat no cardiologist has ever heard. It is the most common of miracles, fashioned of fleecy clouds - a handful of stars tossed into the night sky.

A good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious.

Death is as casual and often as unexpected as birth. It is as difficult to define grief as joy. Each is finite. Each will fade.

A golf ball can stop in the fairway, rough, woods, bunker or lake. With five equally likely options, very few balls choose the fairway.