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

“Only World War II, which mobilized 10 million draftees, could by any stretch of the imagination be called a people's war.”

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

“New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East”

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