We are all Clapping Monkeys, but while some of us smile, others look around to see if anyone has noticed.

Walk free from the long shadows cast by small people.

What I am interested in, what I write and care about, exists in the slow lane, somewhere between hand-ploughed fields and a pint of real ale.

Eyesight can be so blinding. We need to look beyond the face of things.

There’s no such thing as writer’s block, so long as you’ve had plenty of time to think about what you want to write.

The process of creation begins way before one starts writing.

I needed some space to lay myself out, so that I could decide which pieces I wanted to pick up.

Imagination is the real magic that exists in this world. Look inwards, to see outwards. And capture it in writing.

A consultant: someone brought in to build a one-handled wheelbarrow.

Sentiments, as I have found, can be harvested from places where our memories are fondest.

If we have faith, then we can see the beauty around us. If we don’t then we are just blind followers, not knowing why we are on the path.

To throw away an honest friend is as it were to throw your life away.

Caesar might have married Cleopatra, but he had a wife at home. There's always something.

I have played professional baseball for over half my life. From the time I picked up a baseball glove, I did not want to put it down.

I just try to put as much logic into what I'm doing as possible and try to have fun with it.

Life is but the expression of spirit through matter. To make life manifest requires the union of spirit and body.

I want to be the first player to show what Japanese batters can do in the major league.

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together.

About specific social issues, there is a great deal to say that departs very far from truism and is, accordingly, significant and controversial.

Because the truth is - and we know it - we were born to die without regrets. Regret is the only wound from which the soul never recovers.