I fix what's broken - except in the heart.

As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

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.

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.

Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It's a strange world, why make it stranger?

Writers who can't invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn't paint people, so he painted chairs.