One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.

Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours.

Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.

Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.

Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.

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