Charles Kuralt Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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

...Pomeranians speak only to Poodles and Poodles speak only to God.

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.

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.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.

The sparrows are preparing for winter, each one dressed in a plain brown coat and singing a cheerful song.

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.

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.

What I learned on the road. Above all else - to love my native land.

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?

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

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

I didn't like the competitiveness of big-time journalism.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

If there are bleachers in heaven and a warm sun, that's where you'll find Bill Veeck.

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.

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.

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 did stories about unexpected encounters, back roads, small towns and ordinary folk, sometimes doing something a little extraordinary.

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.

The reality of any place is what its people remember of it.

It takes an earthquake to remind us that we walk on the crust of an unfinished planet.

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

When I was a little boy I used to borrow my father's hat, and make a press card to stick in the hat band. That was the way reporters were always portrayed in the movies.

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.

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.

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.

It's that enthusiasm, that passion for what you're doing, that is most important.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 didn't know what narcissism was until I beheld my own naricssus.

America is a great story and there is a river on every page of it.

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.

I don't think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.

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.

There is melancholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass

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.

Just by luck, I picked good heroes to worship.

I was on the high school track team, believe it or not, and played baseball, poorly but passionately.

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