"When I got back into show business in 1961, I felt — for obvious reasons — that nothing in my life went right, and I realized that millions of people felt the same way. So when I first came back my catch phrase was "nothing goes right." Early on, that was my setup for a lot of jokes."

"I tell ya, my wife likes to talk during sex. Last night, she called me from a motel."

"I tell ya, my family were always big drinkers. When I was a kid, I was missing. They put my picture on a bottle of Scotch."

"What a childhood I had. My mother never breast-fed me. She said she liked me as a friend."

"I tell ya, my wife's a lousy cook. After dinner, I don't brush my teeth. I count them."

"I was an ugly kid. I worked in a pet store. People kept asking how big I get."

"I tell ya, I grew up in a tough neighborhood. The other night a guy pulled a knife on me. I could see it wasn't a real professional job. There was butter on it."

"A homeless guy came up to me on the street, said he hadn't eaten in four days. I told him, "Man, I wish I had your willpower.""

"I live in a tough neighborhood. They got a children's zoo. Last week, four kids escaped."

"My old man never liked me. He gave me my allowance in traveler's checks."

"I like to date schoolteachers. If you do something wrong, they make you do it over again."

"When I was a kid I got no respect. When my parents got divorced there was a custody fight over me... and no one showed up."

"When I was a kid, I never went to Disneyland. My ol' man told me Mickey Mouse died in a cancer experiment."

"I told my doctor I broke my arm in two places. He told me to keep out of those places."

"What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol' man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away."

"In my life I've been through plenty. when I was three years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me."

"I was an ugly kid. When I was born, after the doctor cut the cord, he hung himself."

"If all goes well, about a week. If not, about an hour and a half."

"There goes the neighborhood."

"I killed nobody that didn't deserve killing. In all of these here killings there was no alternative. You couldn't call them cold-blooded killings.... It was either my life or theirs."

"There are many franchises today, and again I could begin to articulate them one by one, who have deep trouble. … We have a remarkable number of teams losing a lot of money."

"Ron was frustrated. He wasn't happy but he wasn't as angry as I thought he would be. Ron's just kinda mystified, at this point, wondering what it will take. It may take a special declaration by Commissioner Bud Selig to get this to happen. I know Bud loves him. I know Bud wants him in the Hall of Fame. Most people who've followed the game for a long time, especially during that 1960s era with all those superstars, feel that Ron deserves to be in there."

"No suspended World Series Game shall be resumed until the various weather conditions have met the standards of Bud Selig. In the event that Bud Selig is no longer able to function as commissioner of baseball, the rule reverts back to the normal standards set forth in various other places in the rulebook."

"From the day Bud became involved in baseball, he divorced me and married baseball."

"A baseball game, if it goes 5 innings, is official for betting purposes for betting either team. Whatever (commissioner) Bud Selig or anyone in baseball declares is completely different from wagering rules in sports books."

"You mean guys don't get injured in spring training? Guys get hurt walking down the street. All the managers, pitching coaches [are] very sensitive. Look, you can always pick at something, but there's a broader picture, a grander picture."

"This gathering of baseball's brightest stars will be an outstanding platform to grow the game internationally. As baseball continues to grow globally, more and more fans around the world have the opportunity to appreciate the grace and excitement of our great game. The first World Baseball Classic will bring a unique blend of enthusiasm to old and new fans alike."

"The positive shelf life of a new stadium has shrunk considerably. The new parks in themselves can't be a long-term or mid-term panacea."

"The one thing we know today is we can't continue to do business the way we have in the past."

"The greatest country in the history in the world is being attacked. So all of this (baseball) doesn"t mean very much."

"That's the best we could do in collective bargaining. The penalties would be much tougher if I had my way. There will be no exceptions."

"St. Louis is closer to Minneapolis than Milwaukee is."

"So that there is no misunderstanding from my perspective, I will suspend any player who tests positive for an illegal steroid. There will be no exceptions. The (players) union is aware of that and they accept it."

"One of the legendary broadcasters of our game. His distinct voice was a comfort to a generation of baseball fans in New England and throughout the country."

"On behalf of Major League Baseball, I am terribly saddened by the sudden passing of Kirby Puckett. He was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term. He was revered throughout the country and will be remembered wherever the game is played. Kirby was taken from us much too soon — and too quickly."

"Major League Baseball is a national institution and we take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to how the game affects the lives of American youth."

"Major League Baseball has not forgotten and will never forget the great contribution and sacrifice that Jackie made to baseball and to all of society"

"Major League Baseball has always recognized the influence that our stars can have on the youth of America. As such, we are concerned that recent revelations and allegations of steroid use have been sending a terrible message to young people."

"I poured my heart out in that call."

"I have often stated that baseball's proudest moment and its most powerful social statement came on April 15, 1947 when Jackie Robinson first set foot on a Major League Baseball field. On that day, Jackie put an end to segregation in baseball and ushered in the era in which baseball became the true national pastime. By celebrating Jackie Robinson Day every April 15, we have ensured that the incredible contributions and sacrifices he made — for baseball and society — will not be forgotten."

"I am terribly saddened to learn of the passing of Harry Dalton. He was one of the great general managers of our generation. I was fortunate to have him serve as general manager of the Milwaukee Brewers from 1978 through 1991."

"We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness."

"(Which authors do you think your writing most closely resembles?) Mukherjee: I see a strong likeness between my writing and Bernard Malamud's, in spite of the fact that he describes the lives of East European Jewish immigrants and I talk about the lives of newcomers from the Third World. Like Malamud, I write about a minority community which escapes the ghetto and adapts itself to the patterns of the dominant American culture. Like Malamud's, my work seems to find quite naturally a moral center...Malamud most of all speaks to me as a writer and I admire his work a great deal. Immersing myself in his work gave me the self-confidence to write about my own community."

"Bernard Malamud was like a second father to [my husband] Clark and me: he was Clark's teacher and when I got married that event also meant our friendship. I loved his writing but I didn't think it had anything to do with my own literary vision, with my world, until I had a very low moment in my life, in 1984. I had then very little money left because of a racist wave in Canada, I was not allowed there any more and legally I could not even have a job; and I was sitting in the kitchen reading Bernard Malamud's Selected Stories (1983) that the writer had sent me himself and suddenly, out of my self-despair, I said, "My God, he is writing about the Jewish community, about their attempts to accommodate to and assimilate American culture or about their failing to do so, which is precisely what I want to write about my own community." And that was my inspiration, in a way, for Darkness (1985), my first collection of stories."

"I have written almost all my life. My writing has drawn, out of a reluctant soul, a measure of astonishment at the nature of life. And the more I wrote well, the better I felt I had to write. In writing I had to say what had happened to me, yet present it as though it had been magically revealed. I began to write seriously when I had taught myself the discipline necessary to achieve what I wanted. When I touched that time, my words announced themselves to me. I have given my life to writing without regret, except when I consider what in my work I might have done better. I wanted my writing to be as good as it must be, and on the whole I think it is. I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing: The men and things of today are wont to lie fairer and truer in tomorrow's meadow, Henry Thoreau said. I don't regret the years I put into my work. Perhaps I regret the fact that I was not two men, one who could live a full life apart from writing; and one who lived in art, exploring all he had to experience and know how to make his work right; yet not regretting that he had put his life into the art of perfecting the work."

"If I may, I would at this point urge young writers not to be too much concerned with the vagaries of the marketplace. Not everyone can make a first-rate living as a writer, but a writer who is serious and responsible about his work, and life, will probably find a way to earn a decent living, if he or she writes well. A good writer will be strengthened by his good writing at a time, let us say, of the resurgence of ignorance in our culture. I think I have been saying that the writer must never compromise with what is best in him in a world defined as free."

"It was all those biographies in me yelling, “We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.”"

"Life is a tragedy full of joy."