Journalist

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.

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.

Kids are always asked, What are you going to be when you grow up? I needed an answer. So instead of saying, a fireman, or a policeman, I said, a reporter.

Look for joy in your life; it's not always easy to find.

I'm not any kind of social reformer.

Just by luck, I picked good heroes to worship.

TV critics, who traditionally hate television and make their living writing about it, often didn't like what I did on the air.

It's best to leap into something you know you love. You might change your mind later, but that is the privilege of youth.

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

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

I recognize that I had a good deal of good luck in my life. I came along at a time when it was pretty easy to get a job in journalism. I went to work at CBS News when I was about 22, and within a year or so was reporting on the air.

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 remember being in the public library and my jaw just aching as I looked around at all those books I wanted to read. There just wasn't time enough to read everything I wanted to read.

I would love to write something that people would still read 50 or 100 years from now. That comes with growing older, I think.

It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.

I think I'd have done better if I had been a little more relaxed-if I had not pressed quite so hard, if I'd not lost quite so much sleep.

I wasn't a very discriminating reader. I read just about everything that came along.

I used to think that driving, sleepless, ambitious labor was what you needed to succeed.

My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.

I don't think one should ever come to my stage of life and have to look back and say, Gosh. I wish I hadn't spent all those years doing that job I was never really interested in.