Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?

There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.

Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

You don't have to understand why anything that has happened nor do you even have to understand what it is that has happened. You have only to live with the remains.

My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school when they were quite young to work, because there actually was no choice. So they've always impressed me with their resilience, their good spirits, their courage. I just remember them carrying on and just doing their lives. They really made a strong impression on me.

Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.