Retirement is purgatory for the former sports star. The world outside organized sports is unforgiving.

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.

The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord.

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

The world is divided up into two kinds of people - those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don't.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

The professional guts a book through - in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve.

There are two types of people ... the scrutinizers and the scrutinized

The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

We’re gonna make up for that. We’re gonna live a long time together.

All people must pray for peace.

Everything that happens in our life expands us and makes us more than we were before, including our ability to be happy and joyful.

The prosperity of a person is directly proportional to the level of his giving.

Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.

You might be a redneck if you need an estimate from your barber before you get a haircut.

So 38% think that Donald Trump's not qualified to be president. How many people thought that about Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton actually did the kind of things Trump is talking about.

The best thing an actor can be is flexible, because all directors are different and all actors are different.

Spontaneity is being present in the present.

I like singing as much as I like acting, and all through high school I thought I might be a Broadway singer.