I had been writing professionally since 1988

I have to detach myself completely from aspirations. I hardly ever listen to music anymore because it arouses all of this yearning in me

In 1938... the year's #1 newsmaker was not FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Nor was it Lou Gehrig or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.

Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison

Having a lot of people suddenly depending on me to get the job done was a marvelous motivator. The book and movie deals seemed to flip a switch in my head, and off I went

We just sat there and watched the plane pass the island, and it never came back," he said. "I could see it on the radar. It makes you feel terrible. Life was cheap in war.

His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him laughing equanimity even in hard times.