Obviously, I think this [162 games a year four times] caused my early retirement, but I couldn't do it any other way. Just for the record, I never asked for any of the days off in my career.

I play to lift a city, and raise a banner.

When I was playing, my wife and kids would go on the road with me, and we would go to different lunch spots that we saw on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."

Just because you're big doesn't mean you can't be an athlete. And just because you work out doesn't mean you're going to have a 12-pack.

You don't need to have a perfect ending to be happy.

Coming up through high school, coaches would tell me not to swing so hard. It's the only way I know. It just happens.

If there's a man on second, I'm trying to get him in with a base hit. The doubles and homers will come. Sooner or later they'll go out naturally. I'm just trying not to do too much.

Miguel and Justin, the two biggest guys on the team, welcomed me right away and once the cool kids in school like you, it's easy to get along.

A lot of people probably say I'm stupid, and they're probably right, because there are people who take days off who are still in the league, and I'm not.

I have nothing left to prove. I've already done enough to my neck.

I'm still working out. It keeps me feeling good about things.

I'd rather someone be honest and tell me something that I didn't want to hear, rather than dishonest and tell me something I want to hear.

The deeper interior you have the more you have in your library.

I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.

You'll never get to be a saint if you deny the bit of the devil in you.

Pay bad people with your goodness; fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve a victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.

Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

Hell means torture; torture means badness. Goodness cannot create or produce badness. Hell does not belong to God; it has been invented by the horrific and sick minded people.

BTW, the roach's name is Max (courtesy of Brianna, "because of I had a puppy, I'd name him Max").

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

Jesus is all the world to me my life, my joy, my all. He is my strength from day to day Without Him, I would fall.