It would be great to just be able to ignore everything and pitch to a spot, to suppress the intellect and let the intuition take over.

I just write mechanical things.

Regardless of what you want to call it, guys need some type of spirituality they can grab onto. If it's Christianity, which is a very structured approach, or if it's something that's a little more open-ended... like, Zen's something you can make yourself a part of. You can interpret it for yourself, like Taoism and stuff like that.

I view my pitching on how confident I was out there, period. And if I lose that confidence, I can become a prisoner of my own mind.

I think in the bullpen you can tell during your warmups, if you have a good feel for it. But anything can happen once you get into a game. Sometimes you just wind up throwing it better than ever before one day without knowing why.

When I'm doing well, it's like I'm in a nice little ballet. Everything is going slow all around me. It's very peaceful.

I can relate to anyone. I can hang out with stoners, skaters, surfers, stockbrokers, lawyers, athletes, rappers. I feel I can hang out with any group of people and find common ground to talk with them.