Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.

For a writer, children make life needlessly hard. I've muddled through a lot of things, but I have not muddled through my writing life. I work absolutely flat out, giving it my all.

People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are.

What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember it, the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly.

For writers - even sportswriters - bad news is always easier than good, since it is, after all, more familiar.

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -- those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.