{ "type": "book", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "title": "A Long Way from Home", "slug": "a-long-way-from-home", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home.md", "author": { "name": "Tom Brokaw", "slug": "tom-brokaw", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw" }, "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/random-house-trade-paperbacks/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home_978-03-7575-935-2.jpg", "quotes_count": 5, "quotes": [ { "id": "eaa7dfe9-b73a-404e-be95-8d7bb6480ba1", "slug": "on-those-trips", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home/on-those-trips", "text": "On those trips back to the Great Plains I always try to imagine the land before it was touched by rails and plows, fences and roads. I can still drive off the pavement of South Dakota highways, find a slight elevation in the prairie flatness, and look to a distant horizon, across untilled grassland, and with no barbed wire or telephone poles or dwellings to break the plane of earth and sky. It is at once majestic and intimidating. More than a century after the first white settlers began to arrive, the old Dakota Territory remains a place where nature rules.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 5, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "nature", "slug": "nature", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Brokaw#A_Long_Way_From_Home_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:01" }, { "id": "d33de4f3-5806-480a-8fe6-3eaaf8ed8da8", "slug": "it-is-not", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home/it-is-not", "text": "It is not lost on me that all of my good fortune in life and my career would have been neutralized at the outset if my skin had been a few shades darker. I would not have gotten that first job in Omaha or the second one in Atlanta two and a half years later. There were no people of color working in the newsrooms of either city in the early and mid-1960s. In the network newsrooms, where the battle for civil rights was the defining issue in the early days of Huntley-Brinkley and Walter Cronkite, racial diversity was at best a notion. When America first began to seriously confront racial inequalities in the sixties, mobilized by the courage and eloquence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his equally brave and determined followers, I naively believed we would cure the cancerous effects of racism in my lifetime. I now know that is not true. Race remains a central issue in the evolution of our political, economic, and cultural environment. It continues to haunt me personally; I am grateful that my formative years in the mostly white environment of the upper Midwest sharpened my sensibilities about the inequities and complexities of race for the rest of my life.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 206, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "racism", "slug": "racism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/racism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Brokaw#A_Long_Way_From_Home_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:01" }, { "id": "be8e5b0d-38d3-43d2-bd04-3aee2ec012ab", "slug": "when-i-sent", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home/when-i-sent", "text": "When I sent this book to my mother for her comments and corrections, she wrote back to say, \"In some parts your ego is showing, bu mostly it's fine.\" Forty years after I left home for the last time, she still has my number.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "humor", "slug": "humor", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor" }, { "name": "mother", "slug": "mother", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/mother" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Brokaw#A_Long_Way_From_Home_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:01" }, { "id": "9fdb061e-35b4-4b60-9e63-d879b45d4094", "slug": "the-world-in-which", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home/the-world-in-which", "text": "The world in which I work and live is a long way from home, but the early bearings I took as a child on the prairie, surrounded by working people and the communities they established, often in difficult circumstances, have been a steadying and reassuring presence. They are familiar markers and sentinels, useful and reliable even now, forty years after I left the land and the people that launched me.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 233, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "childhood", "slug": "childhood", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/childhood" }, { "name": "home", "slug": "home", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/home" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Brokaw#A_Long_Way_From_Home_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:01" }, { "id": "9c640d4b-228d-443b-83f2-33ff58ca3e82", "slug": "in-1962-i-put", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/tom-brokaw/a-long-way-from-home/in-1962-i-put", "text": "In 1962, I put my home state of South Dakota in a rearview mirror and drove away. I was uncertain of my final destinatin but determined to get well beyond the slow rhythms of life in the small towns and rural culture of the Great Plains. I thought that the influences of the people, the land, and the time during my first twenty-two years of life were part of the past. But gradually I came to know how much they meant to my future, and so I have returned often as part of a long pilgrimage of renewal. When I do return, my wardrobe and home address are New York, my job is high-profile, and my bank account is secure, but when I enter a South Dakota cafe or stop for gas, I am just someone who grew up around here, left a while back, and never really answers when he's asked, \"When you gonna move back home?\" I am caught in that place all too familiar to small-state natives who have moved on to a rewarding life in larger arenas: I don't want to move back, but in a way I never want to leave. I am nourished by every visit.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 3, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "home", "slug": "home", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/home" }, { "name": "longing", "slug": "longing", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/longing" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Brokaw#A_Long_Way_From_Home_(2002)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:05:01" } ] }