Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.

You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.

My judgement is not good when I am on a book tour. I am not thinking about it that much. What happens is I will go back home. I have a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old and a wife who is now taking care of them who is wondering where her husband is.

The Red Sox are a curious thing because so much here is media driven. You can't go fire half your scouts here because they are all friends with the local reporters. Your life is going to hell in the papers.

Baseball is this intense subculture that actually doesn't speak very much for the larger culture.

In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.

The sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons.

If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then the media around it.

There are several insights at the heart of the A's system that I think are wonderful for baseball. One, that it's a team game. That no one player is going to make that much of a difference to your team, so for god's sake don't go blow a quarter of your budget on one guy.

The Red Sox are the local scapegoats. It's hard enough to play baseball without being the local scapegoat too.

The sports world is an echo chamber. All it takes is one quote from a general manager and a thousand sports columns bloom.

Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.

I think that fans are always looking for someone to blame. Wouldn't it be nice if they looked in the mirror?

Why pay $20 million to Harrison Ford? I don't even understand that. They think they have to do it... If someone puts a price on himself, that suggests he is irreplaceable, then he better find somewhere else to work.

I don't think there is a national pasttime. Watching TV is a national pasttime. Really. If there is a national pasttime, it is watching TV.

People who think they know what they are talking about when they talk about baseball include the announcers and all of the sports press - no matter how much evidence you present them to the contrary they will continue to think that what they think is right.

There has been this - and it's reflected in the broadcasts - this moronic use of statistics. Which has suggested to everyone who is intelligent the use of statistics is moronic.

The Oakland clubhouse is a wonderful place. A lot of these guys feel like rejects. They were rejects and they feel - they can tell you how baseball screwed up.

You can anchor the mind into answering a question a certain way by giving them a totally unrelated piece of information dropped before.

A banking system is an act of faith it survives only for as long as people believe it will.

Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich.

The essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.

The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.

No money on earth can buy the love and affection that has been given to me by a grateful nation.

I have loved but one flag and I can not share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for the League of Nations.

Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.

But today, I feel the genuine warmth, the affection, and although I may joke about it, I am touched.

Well the wedding in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury was a fairy tale and there was a huge public impress, investment of goodwill, affection and indeed money in this Institution. It was a huge success at the time.

All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

The public has always had affection for gay entertainers. The time was right for an out gay entertainer.

While I've lived in L.A. since 1985, I'll always consider Chicago my home town and have much affection for it. My parents and sister still live there so I try to visit as often as I'm able.

A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.

I would tell anyone who wants something from someone else to feign not wanting it. People are perverse. If you show great affection to them, they'll run the other way.

I think the President inspires tremendous affection and loyalty by a wide range of people.

He makes a great mistake... who supposes that authority is firmer or better established when it is founded by force than that which is welded by affection.

Even Stravinsky does not evoke the same public affection as Verdi.

Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.

Talk not of wasted affection - affection never was wasted.

My father had retained an emotional affection for the ceremonial of his parental home, without allowing it to influence his intellectual freedom.

Love is of that excellent nature, that it is esteemed by the best of men, and accepted from the meanest persons; what then is the affection of a Father!

If I did not have for him the warm affection a son feels toward a less austere and preoccupied father, I at least had an immense respect for him, and a great admiration.

In dread fear of sentimentality, another thing true is not said-that for its staff the paper is a source of pride and, I do believe, an object of affection and-yes, love.

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

But if you love animals for all the right reasons- and that's just love and affection- then you're going to go after animals who need you.

If we judge love by most of its effects, it resembles rather hatred than affection.

We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.

I love Philadelphia. I was shocked at what a great city this is. For me, it is the cat's pajamas. I love everything about it. I love where I live. I love the people. I have been met with such kindness and affection here.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

During our travels, the Indians entertained me well; and their affection for me was so great, that they utterly refused to leave me there with the others, although the Governor offered them one hundred pounds sterling for me, on purpose to give me a parole to go home.