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

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.

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.

If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood - if it makes you sick, you've got a long way to go, baby.

Create or attract through focused desire the things you wish for in life.

People that don’t move will never notice the chains they carry.

I come from straight theater.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

...when you buy just two or three tons from a grower, they see the artisan work you do with their grapes, and then they want to give you their good fruit. By keeping small I can put my heart into it.

Well, I'm not a critic, I'm just a worker. So, I'm always grateful for anything the critics say - good or bad.

Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.

In my estimation, the only thing that is more to be guarded against than bad taste is good taste.

It's almost impossible to make the case that Bush is a conservative. That may be good; that may be bad.