There are boxers possessed of such remarkable intuition, such uncanny prescience, one would think they were somehow recalling their fights, not fighting them as we watch.

Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.

He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life.

The punishment – to the body, the brain, the spirit – a man must endure to become even a moderately good boxer is inconceivable to most of us whose idea of personal risk is largely ego-related or emotional.

. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

Before I undertake a lengthy project, I have usually given much thought to it over a period of years. My files are filled with likely subjects - which perhaps, one day, I will develop.