I think I wrote once that baseball in many ways is very much like reading. I said there are more bad books than bad ballgames, or maybe it was the other way around. I can't remember.

Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.

I felt what I almost always feel when I am watching a ballgame: Just for those two or three hours, there is really no place I would rather be.

Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time.

The best defense against partisanship is expertise.

I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.

The great thing about catchers is that they do a lot of different things, and they're basically overlooked.

Life is tough and brimming with loss, and the most we can do about it is to glimpse ourselves clear now and then, and find out what we feel about familiar scenes and recurring faces this time around.

What really makes baseball so hard is it's retributive capacity for disaster if the smallest thing is done wrong, and the invisible presence of defeat that attends every game.

Baseball’s absolute unpredictability makes amateurs of us all.

Those who live by the wall must die by the wall.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

Once I start shooting I forget the scriptwriter in me. I like things flowing. If you have talented actors who bring their own ideas, it can be much better than what you have worked out.

My own son feels I'm uncool but my grandson loves me. Being cool or uncool is a generational thing. But as a personal thing, I really love everybody in sight.

You wind up listening to one song that you really like 30 times on YouTube and then you're done with it. That's the way it is.

Here's a sigh to those who love me,And a smile to those who hate;And, whatever sky's above me,Here's a heart for every fate.

If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that Bush lied about WMD, the thumbnail version of Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.

All I want to do with my life is try and make music that I really love, and so every day I try and work on music.

I've always worked with a team of actors and filmmakers ever since I was a kid in Michigan making Super-8 movies.

You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.

I'd actually rather have a talk show in Australia than even America; I hope I do end up with a talk show.