The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

Nationality isn't soul.

... it's possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.

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.

There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.