RICHARD BEN CRAMER

If it doesn't go [fit] on a bumper sticker, we don't listen.

I think the story of DiMaggio was alluring precisely for its impossibility.

When there are fewer and fewer publishers of scale, it's just not good for authors.

DiMaggio was never a rube. He was very smart and very urban. Coming out of the Great Depression, he was the immigrant boy who made it big. Coming back from World War II, he had all the wealth and power that New York aspired to. When New York saw itself as the center of the world, he was its paragon of class.

You can say you're going to take a vacation, and you can even take the time, but you might as well not, because the book is still sitting in your head.

The whole point of Israel was to create a place where Jews could live the best life - and liveliest - in accordance with their values.

Losing the presidency is not like losing any other office. More than any other office, it's a vote about you as a whole human being.

The first time I met Alex Rodriguez, he was in the fight of his life. He was the guy who was supposed to have everything - good looks, good health, good habits - all the talent in the world and most of the money.

After the presidency, there's nowhere else to go in politics.

The average-guy routine works only so much, and then people begin to want something more.

He's made a business out of being Joe DiMaggio. To remain Joe DiMaggio, you better not have too much known. He's right. The closer you get, the more explosively bad stuff you find.

Don't be the schmuck on the other side of the table. Don't get an interview with the guy. Be in the room with him while he's being interviewed by someone else.

Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those.

People feel overloaded, that politics has become kind of a public utility: hot- and cold-running politics any time of the day or night.

I had every stress-related illness you can get.

At some point... Israel ground away, or gave away, her birthright of loyalty from the West.

This book-promotion stuff is like a political campaign. You work your butt off, and at the end of the day, you can't tell if it's made a damned bit of difference.

I was with the mujaheddin, the rebels, and they were fighting against the Russians, and they would bring me along. Some of the adventures, when I look back at them now, it's a wonder I'm still around.

When you're working on a project that's going to take six years, you're weird from the jump.

We strove for more than 60 years to give Joe DiMaggio the hero's life. From his debut at Yankee Stadium in 1936 until his death in 1999, DiMaggio was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good.

The expectations for a nonfiction writer are awful high.

It's not fit work for an adult just dragging idols off the shelf. It's too easy.

I used to think that the image of the press in the 1940s - a bunch of guys in hats screaming on the courthouse steps - was all baloney. I used to say, 'I know reporters. We're not like that.' But we are.

Certainly no man could be such an irredeemable 'schlub' as the American press portrays its losers.

If you're following candidates in a campaign, you get on their plane, and what they're generally doing is they're dividing the cost of that charter flight by the number of reporters they're carrying aboard. In effect, the press is buying them that campaign flight.