In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved

A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'

Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.

Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.

I turn down invitations to do things for money. I have almost no interest in making money. Actually, I've acquired a fair amount of money that I will never live to spend. So earning money, in a way, depresses me, because I feel it's just piling up.