My work was entirely nonfiction.

Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.

A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.

My agent and I put out my proposal one Thursday afternoon in August, 1998. Publishers started bidding immediately, and that process progressed for a few days.

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.

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

My illness is excruciating and difficult to cope with. It takes over your entire life and causes more suffering than I can describe.