I've been shot at on numerous occasions.

The desire to become a journalist came really because I very much like living abroad, and like to travel, and wanted to be paid for it.

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

In some ways the domestic reporting is a lot easier because Americans will talk to you about anything.

I grew up in New York City in the late '70s, at a time when U.S. - China relations were something that was on the front page of The New York Times on a regular basis.

I had my life threatened by Bosnian Serbs on numerous occasions.

A lot of times when we work overseas we tend to put the experience of someone who lives overseas, a Chinese person or a Korean person or a Bosnian person, within the prism of an American life.

And then I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to China in 1980, which was quite early.

And the AP sent me to China very quickly.

The one indication that I got that I was doing the right job in Bosnia was that at different periods of time all the factions came down very hard on me.