Quotes from Charles Kuralt

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.

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 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.

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

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

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.

Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people.... We are a nation rich in rivers.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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

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.

We always take credit for the good and attribute the bad to fortune.

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.

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 would like to explore some side roads in life while I am still in good health and good spirits.

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.

I didn't have the ambition to be a broadcaster. I was going to be a newspaper reporter the rest of my life, but that opportunity came along.

I had a tight stomach all the time. I actually developed ulcers. I've learned better than to put all that internal pressure on myself.