Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

My writing habits are pretty static. I get up every morning between 6 and 7 am, grab a cup of coffee, say a few prayers, and go downstairs to my office and start writing.

You've lived through a lot of wars, I said. "Yes." Do they ever make more sense? "No.

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others.

All who are born are always dying.

And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.