“Here dead we lie Because we did not choose To live and shame the land From which we sprung.Life, to be sure, Is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, And we were young.”

“Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,But young men think it is, and we were young.”

“We dreamed together, we planned a life together. We were so young, but we were so sure.”

“Why do we remember the Boys of Summer? We remember because we were young when they were, of course. But more, we remember because we feel the ache of guilt and regret. While they were running, jumping, leaping, we were slouched behind typewriters, smoking and drinking, pretending to some mystic communion with men we didn't really know or like. Men from ghettos we didn't dare visit, or rural farms we passed at sixty miles an hour. Loving what they did on the field, we could forget how superior we felt towards them the rest of the time. By cheering them on we proved we had nothing to do with the injustices that kept their lives separate from ours. There's nothing sordid or false about the Boys of Summer. Only our memories smell like sweaty jockstraps.”

“Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if we didn’t have to think about being boys or girls or men or women or old or young, fat or thin… if we could all just be certain we were the same. We might be bored, but the danger of life and of living would be gone.”

“Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.”