“To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you.”

“No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.”

“I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it.”

“The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship.”

“[Robert] Capa: He was a good friend and a great and very brave photographer. It is bad luck for everybody that the percentages caught up with him. It is especially bad for Capa. (On Capa's death in Vietnam, May, 27, 1954)”

“On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar.”

“I have recall. I don't know why or how. I had a guy once who said he played against me in novice [league, for kids under nine], for the Detroit Lasers. And I said, "Oh yeah, we beat you in the tournament, 8-1 and I think I scored seven goals, and the goalie was left-handed." And he was, "Oh my God. I was the goalie!" .”

“The last year I was playing, I asked the stick boy to get me a Diet Coke and he said, "Really?" But I always had one on the bench because that's what I did in 1979 when there wasn't Gatorade. If you needed energy you went and got a Snickers or a Kit Kat. Nobody knew any better.”