Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.

The real gladiators of the world are so humble in their origins and unremarkable in appearance that when we stand next to them in a grocery-store line, we never guess how brightly their souls can burn in the dark.

What's the worst thing about getting old? Getting old.

I believe every...man remembers the girl he thinks he should have married. She reappears to him in his lonely moments, or he sees her in the face of a young girl in the park, buying a snowball under an oak tree by the baseball diamond. But she belongs to back there, to somebody else, and that thought sometimes rends your heart in a way that you never share with anyone else.

How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?

I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

That's one of the great advantages of age. You can say, I don't want to, I don't care, you can throw temper tantrums, and nobody minds.