I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.

I'm really not interested in other people's opinions, because I think frankly most of those opinions are either misinformed and adding to this endless ball of hot air we have in our society where everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and sacred and what counts.

Actually, my dog I think is the only person who consistently loves me all the time.

Committing unnecessary surgeries is very, very rare. And it's very wrong.

I actually like football a great deal.

I always had a curiosity about Texas. I had a curiosity about small-town life, although, granted, Odessa's not a tiny town.

I am 5'6' and desperately wish I was taller.

I don't have many friends in Philadelphia. I sort of have one. I have the dog and someone else.

I think the older you are, the more you're going to cling to the printed word as being sacred.

I think the only safe medium are books, because people like to hold books in their hand.

If someone is going to criticize what you've written and you believe in what you've written then you should respond.

If you leave your wife and you don't ever contact her again, that says something about how you felt about the marriage.

Maybe it's a tired tale, but without an education, you're not going to go anywhere.

One of the exciting things about reporting is going to places you've never been to before.

One of the inspirations for my becoming a writer was the baseball board game Strat-O-Matic.

There are the medical dangers of football in general caused by head trauma over repetitive hits.

Well I just always wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

Athletics: it's a wonderful thing, it's a spell-binding thing, nothing in life has quite as much pageantry, as much emotion within a finite time frame, it's incredibly exciting.

But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it.

I am the father of twin sons that were born in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1983. They were 13 weeks premature. Gerry weighed 1 pound 14 ounces, and Zachary 1 pound 11 ounces. They were the first male twins to ever survive at Pennsylvania Hospital.