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.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

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 don't have any well-developed philosophy about journalism. Ultimately it is important in a society like this, so people can know about everything that goes wrong.

I can't say that I've changed anybody's life, ever, and that's the real work of the world, if you want a better society.

I had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.

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.

I think all those people I did stories about measured their own success by the joy their work was giving them.

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

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