Baseball, because of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, is a place where memory gathers.

Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.

I wish you were that birch rising from the clump behind you, and I the gray oak alongside.

Opposites are attracted when each one is anxious about its own character.

Every now and then I meet someone certain of personal greatness. I want to pat this person on the shoulder and mutter comforting words: "Things will get better! You won't always feel so depressed! Cheer up!"

In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty's torch. In football you run over somebody's face.

Of course newspaper sportswriting is mostly terrible - and of course it is usually the best writing in the paper.