I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

For misery don't blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Politics isn't in my nature.

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.