Well, I have to write. A lot of people forget that. They think I’m sort of crazy baffoon who can’t make up his mind what to do in life

I never understood people who don't have bookshelves.

The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself--the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent--all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action.

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact.

I remember being awed by it - the uniqueness and nicety of style - and I suspect I was a bit jealous because we were more or less of the same generation.

Golf cannot be played in anger, or in any mood of emotiional excess. Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit if not in rage surely in bewilderment, or gloom, or in cynicism, or even hysterically - all of those emotional excesses must be contained by the professional. Which is why balance is one of the essential ingredients of golf. Professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course - whatever emotions are seething within - with the grim yet placid and bored look of cowpokes, slack-bodied in their saddles, who have been tending the same herd for two months.

The smaller the ball used in the sport, the better the book.