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I Started Out Thinking Of America As Highways And State Lines. As I Got To Know It Better, I Began To Think Of It As Rivers.

-Charles Kuralt

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I Started Out Thinking

Charles Kuralt

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I Started Out Thinking Of America As Highways And State Lines. As I Got To Know It Better, I Began To Think Of It As Rivers.

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Thanks To The Interstate Highway System, It Is Now Possible To Travel Across The Country From Coast To Coast Without Seeing Anything.

You Can Find Your Way Across This Country Using Burger Joints The Way A Navigator Uses Stars.

It Was So Much Fun To Have The Freedom To Wander America, With No Assignments. For 25 Or 30 Years I Never Had An Assignment. These Were All Stories I Wanted To Do Myself.

I Much Preferred The Peaceful Life On The Road, Where I Didn't Have To Ask Embarrassing Questions And Do All The Things Real Reporters Have To Do.

Embarrassing Questions

It Was Cold Out There, Bitter, Biting, Cutting, Piercing, Hyperborean, Marmoreal Cold, And There Were All These Minnesotans Running Around Outdoors, Happy As Lambs In The Spring.

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 Don't Think I Had A Reputation As A Hard Worker, But Inside I Was Always Being Eaten Up By The Pressures.

I Did Stories About Unexpected Encounters, Back Roads, Small Towns And Ordinary Folk, Sometimes Doing Something A Little Extraordinary.

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.

You Can't Travel The Back Roads Very Long Without Discovering A Multitude Of Gentle People Doing Good For Others With No Expectation Of Gain Or Recognition. The Everyday Kindness Of The Back Roads More Than Makes Up For The Acts Of Greed In The Headlines. Some People Out There Spend Their Whole Lives Selflessly.

A Country So Rich That It Can Send People To The Moon Still Has Hundreds Of Thousands Of Its Citizens Who Can't Read. That's Terribly Troubling To Me.

The Sparrows Are Preparing For Winter, Each One Dressed In A Plain Brown Coat And Singing A Cheerful Song.

Look For Joy In Your Life; It's Not Always Easy To Find.

There Are A Lot Of People Who Are Doing Wonderful Things, Quietly, With No Motive Of Greed, Or Hostility Toward Other People, Or Delusions Of Superiority.

I Believe That Writing Is Derivative. I Think Good Writing Comes From Good Reading.

The Storytelling Tradition That You Bring From The South, I Don't Know Where It Arose, But It's Still There. You Can't Go To The Feed Store, Or The Country Courthouse Without Running Into Storytellers.

I Had A Little Insight Into Life That Most Kids Probably Didn't Have. My Mother Was A Schoolteacher, And My Father Was A Social Worker. Through His Eyes I Saw The Underside Of Society.

You Can Find Your Way Across This Country Using Burger Joint The Way A Navigatior Uses Stars....we Have Munched Bridge Burgers In The Shadow Of The Brooklyn Bridge And Cable Burgers Hard By The Golden Gate, Dixie Burgers In The Sunny South And Yankee Doodle Burgers In The North....we Had A Capitol Burger - Guess Where. And So Help Us, In The Inner Courtyard Of The Pentagon, A Penta Burger.

The Love Of Family And The Admiration Of Friends Is Much More Important Than Wealth And Privilege.

If There Are Bleachers In Heaven And A Warm Sun, That's Where You'll Find Bill Veeck.

The Greatest Thing You Can Do In Life Is To Tell A Young Boy Or Girl That They're 'the Very Best' At Something - Baseball, Reading, Art. That Gives Them The Wonderful Feeling That They Can Do Anything, Which They Can!

I'm Not Knocking The Wholesale Grocery Business Or Any Other, But There Is A Kind Of Romance In Journalism Which Some People, The Lucky Ones, Feel Inside Them All Their Lives.

Rivers Run Through Our History And Folklore, And Link Us As A People.... We Are A Nation Rich In Rivers.

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.

That Was The Overwhelming Thing To Me, The Joy Of Carrying My Portable Typewriter To An Event And Trying To Describe It.

I Didn't Like The Competitiveness Of Big-time Journalism.

Competitiveness

What I Learned On The Road. Above All Else - To Love My Native Land.

I'm Not Any Kind Of Social Reformer.

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.

We Always Take Credit For The Good And Attribute The Bad To Fortune.

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.

Falling In Love

I Think The Feature Reporter Often Walks A Very Thin Line Between A Truly Human Story And One That Slops Over Into Mushiness Or Sentimentality.

My Parents Encouraged Me In Everything I Ever Wanted To Do.

I Suppose I Was A Little Bit Of What Would Be Called Today A Nerd. I Didn't Have Girlfriends, And Really I Wasn't A Very Social Boy.

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.

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.

I Can't Say That I've Changed Anybody's Life, Ever, And That's The Real Work Of The World, If You Want A Better Society.

The Mississippi River Carries The Mud Of Thirty States And Two Provinces 2,000 Miles South To The Delta And Deposits 500 Million Tons Of It There Every Year. The Business Of The Mississippi, Which It Will Accomplish In Time, Is Methodically To Transport All Of Illinois To The Gulf Of Mexico.

It Is Liberalism, Whether People Like It Or Not, Which Has Animated All The Years Of My Life. What On Earth Did Conservatism Ever Accomplish For Our Country?

When I Worked In Los Angeles Covering Hard News, Very Often When Something Important Would Happen I'd Be Off In The Woods Covering Something Unimportant, Which Was More Interesting To Me.

Often I Have Been Exhausted On Trout Streams, Uncomfortable, Wet, Cold, Briar Scarred, Sunburned, Mosquito Bitten, But Never, With A Fly Rod In My Hand Have I Been Less Than In A Place That Was Less Than Beautiful.

There Is Such A Thing As A National Conscience, And It Can Be Touched.

I Wasn't A Very Discriminating Reader. I Read Just About Everything That Came Along.

I Don't Know What Makes A Good Feature Story. I've Always Assumed That If It Was A Story That Interested Or Amused Me, That It Would Have The Same Impact On Other People.

America Is A Great Story And There Is A River On Every Page Of It.

A True Southerner Will Never Say In 2-3 Words What Can Better Be Said In 10-12.

Most Of Those Old Settlers Told It Like It Was, Rough And Rocky. They Named Their Towns Rimrock, Rough Rock, Round Rock, And Wide Ruins, Skull Valley, Bitter Springs, Wolf Hole, Tombstone. It's A Tough Country. The Names Of Arizona Towns Tell You All You Need To Know.

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.

There Is Melancholy In The Wind And Sorrow In The Grass

...pomeranians Speak Only To Poodles And Poodles Speak Only To God.

The Everyday Kindness Of The Back Roads More Than Makes Up For The Acts Of Greed In The Headlines.

It's That Enthusiasm, That Passion For What You're Doing, That Is Most Important.

You Know, Most Reporters Can't Go Back To The Towns They Wrote Stories About. I Never Wrote That Kind Of Story.

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 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.

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.

It Takes An Earthquake To Remind Us That We Walk On The Crust Of An Unfinished Planet.

I Didn't Know What Narcissism Was Until I Beheld My Own Naricssus.

What Is It That Binds Us To This Place As To No Other? It Is Not The Well, Or The Bell, Or The Stone Walls, Or The Crisp October Nights Or The Memory Of Dogwoods Blooming. Our Loyalty Is Not Only To William Richardson Davie Though We Are Proud Of What He Did 200 Years Ago Today. Nor Even To Dean Smith, Though We Are Proud Of What He Did Last March. No, Our Love For This Place Is Based On The Fact That It Is As It Was Meant To Be, The University Of The People.

And Still I Wander, Seeking Compensation In Unforseen Encounters And Unexpected Sights, In Sunsets, Storms And Passing Fancies.

I Think All Those People I Did Stories About Measured Their Own Success By The Joy Their Work Was Giving Them.

When We Become A Really Mature, Grown-up, Wise Society, We Will Put Teachers At The Center Of The Community, Where They Belong. We Don't Honor Them Enough, We Don't Pay Them Enough.

I Would Like To Explore Some Side Roads In Life While I Am Still In Good Health And Good Spirits.

It's Best To Leap Into Something You Know You Love. You Might Change Your Mind Later, But That Is The Privilege Of Youth.

New York Is The True City Of Light In Any Season.

I Started Out Thinking Of America As Highways And State Lines. As I Got To Know It Better, I Began To Think Of It As Rivers.

Good Teachers Know How To Bring Out The Best In Students.

I Have Spent A Good Part Of My Life Looking For The Perfect Barbecue. There Is No Point In Looking In Places Like Texas, Where They Put Some Kind Of Ketchup On Beef And Call It Barbecue. Barbecue Is Pork, Which Narrows The Search To The South, And If It's Really Good Pork Barbecue You Are Looking For, To North Carolina.

The Reality Of Any Place Is What Its People Remember Of It.

I Can't Remember A Time When I Didn't Want To Be A Reporter. I Don't Know Where I Got The Idea That It Was A Romantic Calling.

I Used To Think That Driving, Sleepless, Ambitious Labor Was What You Needed To Succeed.

I Made Friends With A Lot Of Those Who Could Have Criticized Me In Print And Who Didn't, Who Praised Me Instead.

I Would Love To Write Something That People Would Still Read 50 Or 100 Years From Now. That Comes With Growing Older, I Think.

Tv Critics, Who Traditionally Hate Television And Make Their Living Writing About It, Often Didn't Like What I Did On The Air.

To Read The Papers And To Listen To The News... One Would Think The Country Is In Terrible Trouble. You Do Not Get That Impression When You Travel The Back Roads And The Small Towns Do Care About Their Country And Wish It Well.

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.

You Never Heard Anybody Ask 'elvis Who?'

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