Seeing is believing and believing is knowing and knowing beats unknowing and the unknown.

Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.

For someone whose roots in America were strong but only inches deep, and who had no experience, such as a Catholic child might, of an awesome hierarchy that was real and felt, baseball was a kind of secular church that reached into every class and region of the nation and bound millions upon millions of us together in common concerns, loyalties, rituals, enthusiasms, and antagonisms. Baseball made me understand what patriotism was about, at its best.

The question to ask about the writer isn't 'Why does he behave so badly?' but 'What does he gain by wearing this mask?

Eventually the writing takes time. What I want to do is get the story down and I want to know what happens as I write my way into the knowledge of the story.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.