"I shouldn't be fooled, some of his old colleagues told me, by the newer, mellower Murray. As I explored his past, I found that his reputation as an intellectual show-off was well earned. He had long been interested in almost everything—classical history, archaeology, linguistics, wildlife ecology, ornithology, numismatics, French and Chinese cuisine—and he was always ready to lure people into conversations where he could display the depth of his knowledge and, it sometimes seemed, the shallowness of their own. The breadth of his learning had become legendary."

"…People who know about these things say that the short story is the most challenging form, much more so than the novel, because of the precision required; sometimes you have to achieve as much as a no…"

"Mr. President, together with their fellow citizens, American Catholics are committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive, to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communit…"

"It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And I am not being frivolous h…"

"I feel better now than I did at any time last season; the shoulder really hurt me bad last year. The left shoulder still gives me some trouble. It makes me swing differently. I have to adjust. Sometim…"