To be a man, a boy must see a man.

Some of football’s gaudiest displays of manliness are purely aesthetic. It’s not what players do, it’s how they look doing it.

Write every day; never give up; it’s supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can’t look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take.

Baseball, boxing, handball – sooner or later every game gets compared to narrative, but only in football are the plays perfectly linear, drawn up with letters, and only in football is the field itself lined like a sheet of notebook paper.

While I fear that we’re drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we’re defined by what embraces us.

While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us.

Any book is better than no book. Slowly, surely, one will lead you to another, which will lead you to the best.

To be a man, a boy must see a man

Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me. It restored my faith when I was a boy, tended me as a teenager, and when I was a young man the bar embraced me.

In Manhasset you were either Yankees or Mets, rich or poor, sober or drunk...You were 'Gaelic' or 'garlic," as one schoolmate told me, and I couldn't admit, to him or myself, that I had both Irish and Italian ancestors.