It wasn't that I had gotten it right . . . but that I had gotten true.

And Sandy Martindale ... dated Elvis before the rhinestone jumpsuits and the drugs, when he was sharp and cool and jagged, like porcelain that has been hurled against a wall.

It was a good moment, the kind you would like to press between the pages of a book, or hide in your sock drawer, so you could touch it again.

This is home and home is not something you remember, it is something you see every day and every moment.

The only thing poverty does is grind down your nerve endings to a point that you can work harder and stoop lower than most people are willing to. It chips away a person's dreams to the point that the hopelessness shows through, and the dreamer accepts that hard work and borrowed houses are all this life will ever be.

Most national correspondents will tell you they rely on stringers and researchers and interns and clerks and news assistants.

People who think there is something pedestrian about journalism are just ignorant.