I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.

We play because we are wired for joy; it is imperative as human beings.

The caliber of play suffered and attendance declined year by year. Interest in college football was exploding, and there was this new game called basketball.

In response to the challenge of strangers, sport arose as a sublimated representation of a community's armed might as well as its pride of place and clan.

Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure.

My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.

But the dream is never forgotten, only put aside and never out of reach: Where once the dream connected boys with the world of men, now it reconnects men with the spirit of boys.

Award trophies, as opposed to letting the players define and claim their own. Ultimately, pay them to play so that their activity not only resembles work but is work.

Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.

We know these men are professionals whose services are up for bid and whose bags are packed, and yet we call them our own and take personal, even civic pride in their accomplishments.

Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.

We pay a heavy, very heavy price for the superhuman dignity of our calling. The ridiculous is always so near to the sublime. And the world, usually so indulgent to foibles, hates ours instinctively.

To know true love, even though it was impossible to keep, had finally cracked her heart open enough to let someone else in.

In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.

Save one-third, live on one-third, and give away one-third

I think the most that I've learned has been, how do I put this? The innate goodness inside of all of us.

I certainly have a lot to lament, as do we all, everybody has their griefs. But the griefs we can fix, shouldn't we go around fixing them?

I always knew when I graduated from high school I’d go to college. I never thought about what I was walking away from . . . I just wanted to study literature and writing.

We cannot hope to win the ideological battle against Islam without criticism of Islam, it is essential that we continue to criticize Islam.

The quarter of an hour before dinner is the worst that suitors can choose.

It is generally admitted that the most beautiful qualities of a color are in its transparent state, applied over a white ground with the light shining through the color.