My favorite monologue in the book is Kate Harrington's story of her relationship with Truman.

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.

The New York Times published the guest list on the front page. The masks were a brilliant concept.

I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun.

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

It's like people always say, Well, does sport teach you anything in life? It teaches you certain things, but it doesn't teach you other things. It doesn't teach, as I say, very much about marriage, very much about how to make a living, any of those things.

Give me good books, good conversations, and my Trek Y-Foil, and I shall want for nothing else.