The reporter is the daily prisoner of clocked facts. On all working days, he is expected to do his best in one swift swipe at each story.

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

Death is as casual and often as unexpected as birth. It is as difficult to define grief as joy. Each is finite. Each will fade.

Mulligan: invented by an Irishman who wanted to hit one more twenty yard grounder.

Scoops of mint ice cream with chips of chocolate cows.

A reporter meets interesting people. If he endures, he will get to know princes and presidents, popes and paupers, prostitutes and panderers. And always, in the back of his head, there will be a dozen men and women he will never meet. And always, he will feel the poorer for it.

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.