The sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons.

Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .

There's a certain status to suffering in Ireland, that the person who - if you're sitting around a table, the person with the greatest status is the person who had the most horrible thing happen to them most recently.

He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.

He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence.

Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values.

Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.