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.

My dad and my mom had to sacrifice so much, and had to teach us and show us the way of going about things, how to be humble, all those things. They helped us stay on track for what we wanted to do.

We [ me and brother] wanted to win at things like basketball games or baseball games, but off the field we never felt like we had to compete with each other.

When I got to the stadium, one of my biggest things was watching video of hitters.

You have to have a lot of motivation, a lot of heart and be able to work hard. You can never be down on yourself because baseball is a sport that will bring you down [at times].

I was very nervous, excited, and happy to be given the opportunity to even be in the major leagues.

There's a lot of disrespect in the major leagues. I believe that the disrespect in the major leagues is at a high rate and is really bad for the gam

Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

I feel like a spoilt rapper. I get to pick and choose everything.

A sermon is no sermon in which I cannot hear the heartbeat.

An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea.

I don't like the monikers, and I don't like being pigeonholed. You know, I'm a human being.

For centuries, the Muslims were able to co-exist perfectly well with Jews and Christians in the Middle East.

And given that there's been probably a ten-fold amount of information about terrorism through the media than there has about climate change; I think that's quite an interesting statistic.

She doth mean the earth to me! By earth, I actually mean dust.

What sweeter words can fall on the human ear? It's going to be May all week long.