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.

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.

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.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

A long time ago, when I was married, in the beginning it was bliss. I eloped after one month, and I married for security. I thought, 'I finally met a man who loves God and comes from a great family. I'm working, I love God, and I'm out here in California by myself, and I've met this great man.' So, I said yes. And we eloped.

I had a realization in the midst of my happy marriage that I had kind of lost most of my friends - my male friends in particular. And I started wondering if my wife, who was certainly my best friend, supplanted those relationships.

Blacks as a group will never be equal while they have this situation going on, where the vast majority of children do not have fathers in the home married to their mother, involved in their lives, investing in them, investing in the next generation.

I'd done a bachelor's degree, which I'd enjoyed, but I didn't know what to do with my life at the time. I was conflicted, and, being a hopeless romantic, I followed my girlfriend at the time to Vanderbilt, where, obviously, we broke up a couple of months later.