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

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.

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:

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 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.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved for the sake of something greater.

I try to make music with emotion and integrity. And authenticity.

Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t’other from which . . .

You cannot will yourself to be interested in something you’re not interested in. But you can actively discover and deepen your interest.

How can you call it a sacrifice when you choose to do something because you believe in it?

When I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles.