Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far.

Work is born in us. We take to it kindly or unkindly. The terms may be easy or harsh, but the contract is binding.

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.

What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling . . . In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. (p. 176)

We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.

I never drove a car. I'm hopeless that way. I press the wrong buttons on the tape recorder. But if the person I'm interviewing helps me out, that person feels needed. People need to feel needed.

Taking life seriously requires taking death seriously.