'The Daily News' and 'Post' gave me my life, and I want to see them survive.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a newspaperman originally in Colombia. He talked about - and I agree - how everybody has a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

Writing is so entwined with my being that I can't imagine a life without it.

Reporters now are better educated than the crowd I knew when I broke in. We still had guys shaped by Prohibition and the Depression, so the news business still had badly paid people who loved it for the life, because every day was different.

You see the fairy tale - four minutes of glory at the Olympics. I thought my life would be cake after that.

Mick Jagger's fans bought records with their allowances. Sinatra's people bought them out of wages.