The radio was my pal. I was just crazy about it.

I'm a very straight-laced, conservative news kind of guy.

With radio, the listener absorbs everything.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.

I go home by noon, and I'm in bed by 6 p.m. I get up at 1 and do it again.

I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.

I wake about 1 a.m. I'm in the office by 2 a.m. We're on the air at 5.

Any outfit that has to beg its listeners for money is an organization that has to constantly please its listeners or it will dry up and go away. It shouldn't work when you think about it.

Public radio has always been so powerless.

I think we're doing the right things for the right reasons. We're not doing it to sell products. We're not doing it to be popular. We're doing it because in our judgment these stories are important to do, and at this length and this much depth.

When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking his automobile.

But when you see personal artifacts relating to - by genealogy at least - a living human being, it was just more impressive to me than just about anything I've ever read about slavery before.

In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news.

It's also a more personal medium. It seems to go directly to one's brain. There are no pictures to distract.

I got to know every format of every station and who was on and what time.

I wanted to be one of the voices in the box.

Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.

People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there.

Good things just keep happening.

In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.

I've never been able to predict the future of anything.

Never exaggerate your faults, your friends will attend to that.

The pictures are created by the listener, with a little help from the broadcaster. The pictures are perfect. If you're showing pictures, different things in that picture can distract from the spoken word.

At a tiny station in New Albany, Indiana, which is right across from the river from Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. The Louisville stations were loath to hire beginners, so I had to go across the river.

I was encouraged to read aloud in class and vocalize.

If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.

The radio was my pal. I was just crazy about it.

Between 2 and 5 I'm reading in to find out what's been going on while I've been asleep.

I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

Nobody cares about your wardrobe, what your tie looks like, or even if you're wearing one, and I don't.

Some are pre-taped interviews because maybe we can't get that person live or maybe we're not sure it's going to work out right so we tape it an hour in advance.

That's the problem with news interviews, you work your tail off to get prominent figures in the news on the radio, but once they've been on, the event passes, the urgency, the issues you talked about evaporate.

Meanwhile, the meek are a long time inheriting the earth.

I never responded to teaching.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

My rule is to break one sweat a day.

With network shows, writers can be so protective of every syllable.

One in four children being victimized? That's about seven children in every classroom. That's a significant proportion of the population.

Men fall in love faster than, and just as often as, women.

I mean, you know, actors lives - you're forgotten. Look at Barrymore, and look at all the great actors. They're forgotten after awhile.

Quite honestly, if I were doing work related to a living being or historical being where there was visual or audio recordings available, I would find that extremely difficult because I don't know how you would avoid the process of mimicry. And mimicry, to me at any rate, is a very dull prospect.

I'm taking a break from music... everyone was so mean about it and it was so hard that I wanted to die.

It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.

I will always eat pizza! Always.

My whole right arm is tattooed in honor of 'Wizard of Oz.'

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions without conversation face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company.

There is nothing so dreadful as a great victory except a great defeat.

Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatever state he is.