The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.

All political power is primarily an illusion. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.

A job on a newspaper is a special thing. Every day you take something that you found out about, and you put it down and in a matter of hours it becomes a product. Not just a product like a can or something. It is a personal product that people, a lot of people, take the time to sit down and read.

People born in Queens, raised to say that each morning they get on the subway and "go to the city," have a resentment of Manhattan, of the swiftness of its life and success of the people who live there.

Baseball isn't statistics, it's Joe DiMaggio rounding second base.

Go around with your eyes like a camera. Don't lose it by talking. Go and listen. And work!