Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

For discipline is imposed not just on oneself but on those in one's orbit.

For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

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.

Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

It's best to give while your hand is still warm.

I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.