“Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That's why they say, "the game is never over until the last man is out." Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.
No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.
I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Any game becomes important when you know and love the players.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“I don't have to tell you that the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and then erased again. But baseball has marked time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
[Eddie Scissons]”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they’re good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples’ lives for them.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Once you’ve been touched by the land, the wind never blows so cold again, because your love files the edges off it.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Your work has been described as touching the soul of the reader. That's the way I felt. Feel. Honestly. You've touched my soul. I'm sorry if I sound like a middle-aged librarian at a book-autographing session.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“I have to absorb the new season like sunlight, letting it turn my winter skin pink and then brown. I must stuff myself with lore and statistics until my fingers ooze balm.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“You have to make time, even for something as universal as staring at the stars.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Growing up is a ritual, more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“I live. I write. I watch old movies. I read. I watch the sunset. I watch the moon rise.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“A ballpark at night is more like a church than a church”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“I dream of things that never were,”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“I'm not trying to bleed you. I want to renew you.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“If I had my life to live over again, I’d take more chances. I’d want more passion in my life. Less fear and more passion, more risk. Even if you fail, you’ve still taken a risk.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Serenity is a very elusive quality. I've been trying all my life to find it.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they’re good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples’ lives for them. I don’t write autobiography.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“I wonder if there are soft-spoken voices who deliver assignments to all of us in various times ... It is nice to think I have company-that others dance to the muted music I hear.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“I am more than a little jealous that the wonder I am party to has been sprinkled over Salinger's gray head.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“In these days when anything goes in literature, movies, and even TV, to think there are some places so isolated, so backward, so ill-informed as to what’s going on in the world”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they're good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“He pops a bat twice more on home plate, then tosses a ball in the air and swings. The crack of the bat sounds like a paper bag exploding, yet the sound is cold and lonely, too, like a hunter firing on an endless tundra.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
“He cranks up his arm, rears back, and throws, and the ball, taking an even more perfect path than it took off the bat, travels in a white arc, seeming to leave behind a line like a streak of forgotten rainbow as it drops over the fence, silent as a star falling into a distant ocean.”
― W.P. Kinsella, quote from Shoeless Joe
W.P. Kinsella
Born place: in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Born date May 25, 1935
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“In September 2002 the Bush administration announced its National Security Strategy, which declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to US global hegemony, which is to be permanent. The new grand strategy aroused deep concern worldwide, even within the foreign policy elite at home. Also in September, a propaganda campaign was launched to depict Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the United States and to insinuate that he was responsible for the 9 – 11 atrocities and was planning others.”
― Noam Chomsky, quote from Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
“The place suggested a convent with the modern improvements—an asylum in which privacy, though unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation, and meditation, though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast.”
― Henry James, quote from The American
“Has it ever occurred to you that you might be delusional?'
That's what the psychiatrist said, but I think he's wrong. There's an evil flying pizza out there, and it's got Brenda's name on it.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Fearless Fourteen
“Now when she had been hoping for a cigarette and a look at the paper she had to waltz this ridiculous nun downtown to buy a postcard or whatever it was she wanted. “Why don’t they allow you out on your own, Mother? I’m delighted to accompany you of course, but I’ve often wondered.” “It’s part of our Rule,” Immaculata said smugly. Angela felt like punching her in the face. “Are they afraid you’ll make a run for it?” she asked. “Hardly, Miss O’Hara.” “Well there must be some reason but I suppose we’ll never know.” “We rarely question the Rule.” “No, I suppose you don’t. That’s where you have my wholehearted admiration. I’d question it from morning to night.” The nun gave a tinny little laugh. “Oh, I’m sure you would, Miss O’Hara.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“As an observer, I am particularly interested in watching women, married, divorced, single. So many of them trapped in lives they think they must live, in roles they have come to resent, with little job and no laughter. They've "settled." They've compromised. They've learned to adjust.
Among the divorced, many are bitter, coloring their lives with resentment; others live only to meet the man who will complete them.
I have no intentions of adjusting, and I am not looking to define myself by the man I am with. The new me is feeling rebellious, looking for excitement, bursting with energy to explore. There is no way that I am going to sit around feeling sorry for myself, thinking that the only way I can enjoy life is with a man.
With no possessions, no home, and no precedent, I am free to design a life that fits me. Best of all, I have tasted the life I want. My Mexican adventure opened me up. I want more. During my four months away, I met interesting people, I was never bored, and I laughed more than I had in years. I resolve to continue exploring the world, ignoring the THEY who define how people should live.”
― quote from Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World
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The Old Man and the...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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