“The soldiers that didn’t come back were the heroes. It’s a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you’re a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you’re a survivor.”

I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn… If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year’s time.

Sympathy is something that shouldn’t be bestowed on the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.

Though there is growing division among the Ukrainian military ranks as to loyalty in this revolution, the possibility of violence looms over the entire situation.

If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.

Where the ball went was up to heaven. Sometimes I threw the ball clean up into the stands.

Life is full of painful events, and people who have lost their way and hurt others. Our pain is not lessened when we respond with hatred. In fact, the opposite occurs:

I would rather beat the Yankees regularly than pitch a no hit game.

You can talk about teamwork on a baseball team, but I’ll tell you, it takes teamwork when you have 2,900 men stationed on the U.S.S. Alabama in the South Pacific.

Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.

My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don’t think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.

Trying to sneak a fastball by Ted Williams was like trying to sneak a sunbeam by a rooster in the morning.

As much as we disliked the Yankees, fans and players alike, they were good for baseball. They consistently unsuccessful teams like the Browns, Senators, and A’s paid a lot of their bills with those big crowds that poured through the gates when the Yankees came to town.

Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.

Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.

You figure they cheat at the ballpark, they’ll cheat on the golf course, they’ll cheat in business, and anything else in life. Players may laugh about it and say it’s funny, but right down in their heart, they don’t think it’s funny at all, and they have no respect for a person who cheats.

We do not know what is being done in our name. Worse, we do not ask.

People always say it’s a shame someone as talented as Ryan Giggs or George Best before him never played in a World Cup or European Championship and I don’t want my name to be added to that list.

Bei Dao became the most well-known name for me because of certain criticism of my work. Bei Dao was the name under which my work was criticized. So I became more well-known under Bei Dao than under the other names.

In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.

I’ve been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy.

The name Bei Dao was actually given to me with the help of friends. When we were publishing our unofficial magazine, Today, we wanted to avoid being harassed by the police so we were trying to think of names that we could use. It was done very casually.

I was christened Edward. My sister gave me the name Bear when I was a week old and it has stuck.

I love myself. Anything that has my name I’m tickled to death.