“You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner.”

Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth)

Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. Talent alone is never enough.

Divorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony – a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.

Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.

How could one create life with someone who represented death?

Home is where your books are.

Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.

We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.

Betrayal betrays the betrayer.

In loving life you love what can’t survive.

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not exhortation.

I see that the greatest thing about getting older is how your judgment changes and how you come to understand the cycles of life. And you keep having these amazing flashes of understanding.

Anger is really disappointed hope.

People are interested in their own sexuality and they’ve always reflected it in their art. End of story.

How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one’s nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right.

There is a great difference between discoveries and inventions. With discoveries, one can always be skeptical, and many surprises can take place. In the case of inventions, surprises can really only occur for people who have not had anything to do with it.

After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

I was never trained for anything

Boxing is limited fighting with a specific rule set. Fighting is true, where you can do anything.

I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word – politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.

I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

But it’s not anything like what we envisioned it to be. It’s almost like there’s too much choice.