So it was scary, but that's how it goes. To my great delight, I discovered that it did all belong.

It's always been hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.

When some drunken fool asked if she was a lesbian, she would say, 'In everything but sexual preference.

That evening I rode downtown on an unaccountably empty bus, sitting in the last row. At the front I saw a thin cloud of smoke rising around the driver’s head. ‘Hey, bus driver,’ I said. ‘Can I smoke?’ ‘May I,’ said the bus driver. ‘I love you,’ I said.

Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time.

The fundamental truth: a baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.

Man makes plans . . . and God laughs.