W. P. Kinsella Quotations

Find something that thrills you, and when you finish reading it for enjoyment, read it again line by line, paragraph by paragraph to see what you liked about it.

I knew how to read box scores and who the baseball heroes were before I had ever seen or even heard much of a game.

The crack of the bat, the sound of baseballs thumping into gloves, the infield chatter are like birdsong to the baseball starved.

If I have a choice between looking something up and making it up, I'll make it up every time.

I have no interest in non-fiction. I don't read it and don't watch it and don't write it, other than a little journalistic column.

Baseball is meant to be a contemplative game. They play music to draw young people to the game. If young people can't come to the game without music, then they should stay home.

I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.

Read, read, read, read and then read some more.

Most writers are unhappy with film adaptations of their work, and rightly so. 'Field of Dreams,' however, caught the spirit and essence of 'Shoeless Joe' while making the necessary changes to make the work more visual.

Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.

I'm a big fan of curling, follow all the major world events. Watch all four Tennis majors.

My main income came from failed movie and TV options.

In the 70s and 80s, I made a good living. Have managed my funds carefully, will never have to go out and cadge quarters from the tourists.

Basketball is the worst sport. They need to raise the basket at least two feet.

My dad talked a good game. [I'm as a] child got only the World Series on the radio.

1946, if my memory is correct. Harry "The Cat" Brecheen went against the Red Sox in Game 7. I stayed home to listen, practically had my head inside the radio.

At one time I'd been to every park except Baltimore and Houston, but can't even keep track of who plays where these days.

It is hard to compare the eras, but Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb from the past, Sandy Koufax and Roger Clements from the present.

I lost my wife Barbara to cancer few years ago. I would give whatever time I have left to spend one more day with her.

I was lucky to get one good adaptation. Field of Dreams the Musical is lurking in the wings. Hope it will provide my daughters with a ton of money someday.

I think it is worse [in 2015] for a mid-list author such as myself. You either have to sell like Stephen King or go with the small presses where there is no money. I was lucky to have been in the right place and time for many years.

[Mid-list writers are now] less greed on the part of both publishers and chain booksellers. It is easier for them to publish and sell only blockbusters and leave the real work to small presses.

Discovered W. Somerset Maugham in about 5th grade. Didn't understand the plots, but loved the descriptions.

The Great Gatsby, the finest novel ever written.

Have never been a minor league fan.

The law is like rope...useful, necessary, strong, but it can be bent and twisted into all kinds of shapes depending on the occasion.

I've played [Scrabble] tournaments for about 20 years. My daughter, Erin, who lives with me, also travels to tournaments. While I'm not a top division player, I've won a number of tournaments.

He bats like a lightning rod.

I became exclusively an American League fan when they instituted the DH rule, and will remain so until the National League moves out of the dark ages.

It is the same game that Moonlight Graham played in 1905. It is a living part of history, like calico dresses, stone crockery, and threshing crews eating at outdoor tables. It continually reminds us of what was, like an Indian-head penny in a handful of new coins.

Other people get into occupations by accident or design; but writers are born. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk.

Yogi Berra, Bill Lee, they were irreverent, poked fun at the stodgy owners and managers.

Heroes don't need to talk about what they did.

I don't believe in the afterlife.

Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don't write them down.

Any game becomes important when you know and love the players.

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.

Found a good voice and took advantage of it. Each of my specialties was like a prospector discovering a vein of gold. I worked each until the vein was exhausted.

Curt Flood, of course, was in a class by himself, a true hero.

Read! Read! Read! And then read some more. When you find something that thrills you, take it apart paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word, to see what made it so wonderful. Then use those tricks next time you write.

Someone once described the pitching of a no-hit game as like catching lighting in a bottle.

Perhaps crossing the barriers of time has freed me.

Until Color TV came along, BW TV was too muddy to be enjoyable.

I don't have time to read nonfiction.

My intuition told me that it was the grass that was important.Now it glows parrot-green, cool as mint, soft as moss, lying there like a cashmere blanket.

I am an old-fashioned storyteller. I try to make people laugh and cry. A fiction writer's duty is to entertain. If you can sneak in something profound or symbolic, so much the better.

[I had ] uneventful, though isolated childhood. Good, kind, stable parents.

If you build it, they will come.

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.

[I] Played a little softball, but there was nowhere on the field it was safe for me to be.

Praise the name of baseball. The word will set captives free. The word will open the eyes of the blind. The word will raise the dead. Have you the word of baseball living inside you? Has the word of baseball become part of you? Do you live it, play it, digest it, forever? Let an old man tell you to make the word of baseball your life. Walk into the world and speak of baseball. Let the word flow through you like water, so that it may quicken the thirst of your fellow man.

Syzygy, inexorable, pancreatic, phantasmagoria - anyone who can use those four words in one sentence will never have to do manual labor.

After the strike, I lost interest. In reality, neither players nor owners care in the least about the fans. The greed of both factions has destroyed baseball's credibility, at least for the present.

Hardly anybody recognizes the most significant moments of their life at the time they happen.

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.

Baseball games are like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two are ever alike.