“If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut...”

“Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You're, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the...”

“Parenting is no sport for perfectionists.”

“It is naive to think that sport is above politics, that any kind of level playing field exists, or that sport allows the world to put its problems on hold.”

“Football combines the two worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”