"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."

"I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time."

"The first books I was interested in were all about baseball. But I can't think of one single book that changed my life in any way."

"The essence of creativity is the belief that the essence of humanity is our ability to connect."

"The simplest truths often reveal that the greatest battles are fought within."

"People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them."

"I was not born in a home where there were stereotypes. So that was very useful because it gave me the sense of possibilities, of flying, if I may say, of making my hopes and dreams a reality."