35 Quotes by Red Smith

Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.

Young men have visions, old men have dreams.

In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing heroes, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them--Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams.

For 350 years we have been taught that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. Football's place is to add a patina of character, a deference to the rules and a respect for authority.

Ninety feet between the bases is the nearest thing to perfection that man has yet achieved.

I have known writers who paid no damned attention whatever to the rules of grammar and rhetoric and somehow made the language behave for them.

It's no accident that of all the monuments left of the Greco- Roman culture the biggest is the ballpark, the Colosseum, the YankeeStadium of ancient times.

My best girl is dead.

Any sportswriter who thinks the world is no bigger than the outfield fence in not only a bad citizen, but also a lousy sportswriter.