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!"

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

To grow old is to lose everything.

Less is more, in prose as in architecture.

Joe DiMaggio batting sometimes gave the impression, the suggestion that the old rules and dimensions of baseball no longer applied to him, and that the game had at last grown unfairly easy.

I don't know where a poem comes from until after I've lived with it a long time. I've a notion that a poem comes from absolutely everything that every happened to you.

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