Howell Raines Quotations

I stepped on a land mine named Jayson Blair.

Something is clearly wrong with Kansas and the rest of Middle America when it comes to letting economic self-interest guide their voting.

Frankly, no newspaper is set up to monitor for cheats and fabricators.

I was assigned to write the color story in the stands and on the sidelines in the Alabama-Auburn game at Legion Field in 1964, ... My first byline was in the Post-Herald and it was about Bear Bryant. So that's about as good as gets in Alabama.

That story was something I've never had occasion to discuss publicly, ... I assigned it because I was interested in this question: Here is a network that was once iconic in American broadcasting, that was traditionally, in the years of Cronkite and his predecessors, identified as being on the forefront of social policy reporting and coverage of the civil rights movement. Now it's basically at the mercy of the Masters, and what does that say about what had happened at CBS? What did it say about CBS's relationship with the Masters, and what did it say about CBS's relationship with its sponsors? That was the story that I was pressing to get.

All Alabamians benefited from the vigorous political reporting in which the Post-Herald specialized for many years,

I know our institution has been damaged ... I accept my responsibility for that, and I intend to fix it,

For me, fishing and journalism touched the same places in my head. In comparison with that of poets, the fly fishers' and the journalists' experiences are probably pale flavors, but they carry nonetheless a hint of ambrosia.

Fish in the water represent pure potential. If the water is not clear, we do not know if they exist at all. To get them to bite something connected to a line and pull them into our world is managing a birth that brings these creatures from the realm of mysytery into the world of reality. It is a kind of creation.

Fly fishing is the most beautiful way of trying to catch a fish; not the most efficient, just as ballet is the most beautiful way of moving the body between between two points, not the most direct. Fly fishing is to fishing as ballet is to walking.

I have learned that I am also a person who has to be able to go fishing whenever I can and for as long as I want to go. It is a silly thing, but there it is.

It's a lovely tribute and fun to read.

When I am home alone I like to scatter my tackle across the floor and play with it. I may pretend I am working on it, performing preventative maintenance, but really it is playing.

Anything is possible in the life of a man if he lives long enough. Even maturity.

And believe me, to have been in the city of Tuscaloosa in October when you were young and full of Early Times and had a shining Alabama girl by your side--to have had all that and then to have seen those red shirts pour onto the field, and, then, coming behind them, with that inexorable big cat walk of his, the man himself, The Bear--that was very good indeed.

All genius is simple. It involves close observation and a momentous act of self trust.