Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.

I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.

(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action

I'm not a movie person. They're collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.

And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings.

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.