I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter. I don't know where I got the idea that it was a romantic calling.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.

A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read. That's terribly troubling to me.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don't honor them enough, we don't pay them enough.

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.

Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.

Just by luck, I picked good heroes to worship.

Since my retirement, I've spent a lot of time trying to help the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina. A society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens.

Now that I look back on it, having retired from being a reporter, it was kind of romantic. It was a wonderful way to live one's life, just as I imagined it would be when I was 6 or 7.

I suppose I was a little bit of what would be called today a nerd. I didn't have girlfriends, and really I wasn't a very social boy.