Nobody ever got started on a career as a writer by exercising good judgment, and no one ever will, either, so the sooner you break the habit of relying on yours, the faster you will advance.

Egotism is the art of seeing in yourself what others cannot see.

The characters are telling you the story. I'm not telling you the story, they're going to do it. If I do it right, you will get the whole story.

What You Lose on the Swings You Make Up on the Merry-Go-Round.

Life is hard but being stupid makes it harder.

Writing is the only trade I know of in which sniveling confessions of extreme incompetence are taken as credentials probative of powers to astound the multitude.

Show the reader what the character thinks about, and then the reader will think about it too.

You cannot write well without data.

The Red Sox are a religion. Every year we re-enact the agony and the temptation in the Garden. Baseball child's play? Hell, up here in Boston it's a passion play.

The received image of a writer is that of an unproductive sensitive who suffers from the vapors, is enslaved by his gonads, falls victim to romantic swoons and passes out at deadlines.

Rental formal wear of the sky-blue, brocade and shiny varieties is favored by upwardly mobile young gangsters drafted as groomsmen for weddings.

Bring forward what is true. Write it so that it is clear. Defend it to your last breath.

How can a warrior fight without his weapon?

I don't enjoy hearing the sound of my voice. The most important things for me are impossible to articulate extemporaneously.

If we are to understand anything of the human mind we must approach the people of the past with humility rather than an overconfident superiority.

In action be primitive; in foresight, a strategist.

If they can fight and die on Okinawa, Guadalcanal (and) in the South Pacific, they can play ball in America.

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts ; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.

No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith

I haven't counted, obviously, but I reckon I've lost over a year and a half of my career through injury so far.

Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment.