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

When we put words together - adjective with noun, noun with verb, verb with object - we start to talk to each other.

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.

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!"

You know how, when you fly from coast to coast on a really clear day, looking down from many miles up, you can see the little baseball diamonds everywhere? And every time I see a baseball diamond my heart goes out to it. And I think somewhere down there- I don't see any houses, I can hardly see any roads- but I know that people down there are playing the game we all love.

I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.

Your presence in this house is almost as painful and enormous as your absence.