“Writing is like anything – baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.”

My own hobbies are rather quiet. I like to read and do needlework, and I love animals.

The people you don’t know turn out to be exactly like the people you do know, same faults, same everything.

I think how you look is the most important thing in the world. If you look cute, you are cute; if you look smart, you are smart, and if you don’t look like anything, you aren’t anything.

the real reason I had wanted to grow up, the main reason I had been willing to even consider becoming an adult, was so I could have as many pets as I wanted.

Why, oh why with so many other positions in baseball did I take up this one.’

It enrages me to see only certain players singled out for the Hall of Fame because they were born with a God-given specialty.

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

I can wear a baseball cap; I am entitled to wear a baseball cap. I am genetically pre-disposed to wear a baseball cap, whereas most English people look wrong in a baseball cap.

I think my mom and dad did a great job with that, because we [with brother] never had any competition in baseball. We always tried to help each other.

I’ve played everything – baseball, football, basketball. I can still swim a mile a day. That’s why I can’t walk.

I was planning to be a baseball player until I ran into something called a curveball. And that set me back.

I was born to hit a baseball. I can hit a baseball.