“The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.”

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.

For misery don’t blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.

Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.

Nationality isn’t soul.

A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it….

Ithink Isaid’All menare Jews excepttheydon’t know it.’I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it’s an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud.

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.

There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.

Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.

Pac-man? Or is it donkey kong? In truth, it looked a little more violent and military. A slow grin spread over his face. Baseball. Think maybe you could stand behind me and give me a few pointers?

Baseball didn’t really get into my blood until I knocked off that hitting streak. Getting a daily hit became more important to me than eating, drinking or sleeping.

Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.

I was a big baseball player, and my passion in life, in third grade, was collecting baseball cards. That was my childhood thing.

I love to be in the ballpark. I love to just go in and enjoy a great baseball game, a great pitchers’ duel.

I don’t know anything about baseball.

Baseball is the favorite American sport because it’s so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it.

I guess my thermometer for my baseball fever is still a goose bump.