Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the primary center of consciousness just as I do. That fact alone...Well, that fact alone is staggering.

Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be.

Her wish to die was as pervasive as a dial tone: you lift the receiver, it's always there.

I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.

Every scar in my face is worth it.

I love insult, it's always honest.