"I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it."

“The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.”

“Data can't speak for itself; it's up to you to give it a voice. Try to speak truthfully.”

“Everyone knows the best volume of the encyclopedia is the one with ships-S.”

“A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no 'atmospheric' preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.”

Source : S. S. Van Dine (2015). “Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories”, p.6, Booklassic

“The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing.'”

Source : Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.85, Vintage

“A Hospital is no place to be sick.”

Source : "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

“Sometimes I wish I could just fall in love. Then, at least you know who your opponent is.”

“I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor.”

Source : "I didn't know what Adrian Mole looked like - well, not until I saw John Major on the telly". Interview with Alex Clark, www.theguardian.com. November 6, 2009.