I have never received a telephone call that justified the excitement and fuss of the electronics involved. If I can't see somebody I love, for instance, such as a daughter, or a son, I would rather receive a letter.

Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.

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.

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.

All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.

Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken in one's hunches about somebody one has met.

I believe that time, with its infinite understanding, will one day forgive me.