Human memory works its own wheel, and stops where it will, entirely without reference to the last stop, and with no connection with the next.

To Armenians, half Armenians, quarter Armenians, and one-eight Armenians. Sixteen and thirty-second Armenians, and other winners, are likelier to be happy with a useful book

Baseball is caring. Player and fan alike must care, or there is no game. If there's no game, there's no pennant race and no World Series. And for all any of us know there might soon be no nation at all. It is good to care - in any dimension. More Americans put their caring into baseball than into anything else I can think of - and most put at least a little of it there. Baseball can be trusted, as great art can, and bad art can't.

What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.

If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.