I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

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

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.