Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.

The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.

Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.

Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not; it's a deliberate construction.

A clear sentence is no accident.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.