The forties are the time when you begin to take notice of certain aches and pains. Your body and brain behave in inexplicable ways: Less hair on your head, more in your ears and nostrils. More memories in the bank, less synaptic firepower with which to access them. Gravity has started to show its inexorable pull.

The thing about Memphis is that it's pleasingly off-kilter. It's a great big whack job of a city. The anti-Atlanta. You go there, and you can't believe the things people will say, the way they think, the wobbling orbits of their lives. There's an essential otherness.

When the Americans were trying to conquer the Navajos, they felt this need to capture Canyon de Chelly like it was the Navajo capital. It was a meeting place and a sanctuary of last refuge. To control Canyon de Chelly was to control the Navajo people.

I find there's a thin, permeable membrane between journalism and history, and though some academic historians take a dim view of it, I gather a lot of strength and professional inspiration from passing back and forth across it.

I was on a basketball team as a kid, and there were two twins who were a little older and a little bigger than I was, and there was some bullying going on there.

When I started playing, there were no teams and no structure, so I had to play with the boys. I get very emotional when I think about the humiliation that I've suffered playing football.

It’s an amazing life, don’t get me wrong. But being a professional athlete, is… is not as glamorous as everybody sets it out to be."

I'll take criticism. I know that's part and parcel of football. But when it's just reckless and aggressive, I don't listen.