New Orleans is the unique American place.

"What you need for breakfast, they say in East Tennessee, is a jug of good corn liquor, a thick steak and a hound dog. Then you feed the steak to the dog.What you need for breakfast, they say in East Tennessee, is a jug of good corn liquor, a thick steak and a hound dog. Then you feed the steak to the dog.

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

Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people. They nourish and refresh us and provide a home for dazzling varieties of fish and wildlife and trees and plants of every sort. We are a nation rich in rivers

I don’t think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.

You know, most reporters can’t go back to the towns they wrote stories about. I never wrote that kind of story.

For a while there, I was a stringer. The expression comes from the old habit of stringing together the column inches that you had written. They’d measure it and pay you 10 cents an inch for your printed copy.

I gained a great appreciation for what I would call the collective achievement of the country. I began thinking of America as a much more just and humane place than I would have thought if I’d been covering the civil rights struggle.

I could tell you which writer’s rhythms I am imitating. It’s not exactly plagiarism, it’s falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

I had a tight stomach all the time. I actually developed ulcers. I’ve learned better than to put all that internal pressure on myself.