“Every sport pretends to be literature. . .”

“If nobody talks about books, if they are not discussed or somehow contended with, literature ceases to be a conversation, ceases to be dynamic. Most of all, it ceases to be intimate. It degenerates into a monologue or a mutter. An unreviewed book is a struck bell that gives no resonance. Without reviews, literature would be oddly mute in spite of all those words on all those pages of all those books. Reviewing makes of reading a participant sport, not a spectator sport.”

“Every daydream that involves the past sports in its hatband a ticket to the grave.”

“Every man's memory is his private literature.”

“i could never be a sports writer, unless my assignment was to write 'sports sports sports sports sports' for three pages”

“...life every now and then becomes literature...as if life had been made and not happened.”