Only in football is long-term injury the result not of accidents but of the game played properly.

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'

Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.

The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny "arf" - the sound of a lap dog.

Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.

Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.

The kiss surrounded her like air, held her up like water, supported her like the earth and burned her like fire.

I love family reunions. Maybe next year we could pass out samurai swords.

We cannot hand our faith to one another. ... Even in the Middle Ages when faith was theoretically uniform it was always practically individual.

I could never, ever have an abortion.

I seem to play a lot of losers.

When I was almost 13 I was ripe for religion. I was actually just plain ripe.

I like to think that at the end of a show, you can just take your costume off and go to the pub.

The role of a librarian is to make sense of the world of information. If that's not a qualification for superhero-dom, what is?

I would love to have played in the '60s. Now that would have been fun.

Both T.S. Eliot and I like to play, but I like to play euchre, while he likes to play Eucharist.