If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.

Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine.

To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it

For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight.

If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.

Baseball is continuous, like nothing else among American things, an endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons.

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!"