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.

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.

I did work out every day. I needed it to have the endurance to do what needed to be done and not get hurt. I have such a new respect for action stars now.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

This is God's work. Therefore it must be triumphant. There is no place for misgiving or despondency.

Yeah, that's what kind of, we get the idea a little bit yeah, because other people from different countries also try as hard as they can to get a medal or a gold medal in the Olympic Games. And you know, if they can work hard, we can work hard as well.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

I am not stopped by low funds, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, or temptations to stop and work on some other production that would be more financially rewarding.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

Corporate partners help UNICEF fund our programmes for children, advocate with us on their behalf, or facilitate our work through logistical, technical, research or supply support.

The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy.

The work that we do during the winter is very important; we have a new bike and it's important to develop it during this time, and we start with this test.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

I work to stay alive.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

Some people don't like competition because it makes them work harder, better.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that.

I am always successful in my work.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

Much of my work has come from being lazy.

People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.

Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work.

I am playing with the assumptions that we have in our everyday life when we are tripped up or fooled and we learn something, that makes things exciting - I am having fun with that stuff, but you have to manage it so it doesn't get too cute, that's what I trying to work toward.

Even if I don't have a job, I work on plays and scenes.

Only time, education and plenty of good schooling will make anti-segregation work.

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.