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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.

Charles Kuralt

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Charles Kuralt
Age: 62 †
Born: 1934
Born: September 10
Died: 1997
Died: July 4
Correspondent
Journalist
News Presenter
New York City
New York
Charles Bishop Kuralt
Going
Instead
Always
Grow
Fireman
Needed
Policeman
Answers
Reporter
Saying
Policemen
Grows
Reporters
Literature
Answer
Kids
Asked

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You never heard anybody ask 'Elvis who?'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In television, everything is gone with the speed of light, literally. It is no field for anybody with intimations of immortality.
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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.
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A true Southerner will never say in 2-3 words what can better be said in 10-12.
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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.
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You know, most reporters can't go back to the towns they wrote stories about. I never wrote that kind of story.
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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.
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The reality of any place is what its people remember of it.
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You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.
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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.
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Just by luck, I picked good heroes to worship.
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I wasn't a very discriminating reader. I read just about everything that came along.
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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.
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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.
Charles Kuralt
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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.
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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.
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