And he wishes, in the cold quiet of his archer's heart, that he himself could feel the intensity of their reconciliations as strongly as he feels that of their battles.

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

....basically the sort of guy who looks entirely at home in sockless white loafers and a mint-green knit shirt from Lacoste.

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.

Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.

Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

John McEnroe...was arguably the best serve-and-volley man of all time, but then McEnroe was an exception to pretty much every predictive norm there was. At his peak (say 1980 to 1984), he was the greatest tennis player who ever lived-the most talented, the most beautiful, the most tormented: a genius. For me, watching McEnroe don a blue polyester blazer and do stiff lame truistic color commentary for TV is like watching Faulkner do a Gap ad.