“'American Sniper' is a movie. War is a grim reality and with us still.”

“At times, Mario Cuomo seemed to have the humility of a Jesuit and the goals of an emperor.”

“Baseball is a game that shouts, 'Slow Down' to America. Stop tweeting, texting, blogging, watching cable news, and obsessing about polls, lost planes, and focus-group-driven politicians.”

“Baseball is a movable conversation across nine innings. It is eye contact with the person seated next to you in a park where the pitcher is separated from the batter by 60 feet, six inches or in a family room where a 60-inch TV screen hangs on the wall.”

“Cardinal Raymond Burke is a 66-year-old guy who lives in Rome, dresses like Queen Elizabeth, and talks like someone who majored in misogyny at some bogus, backwoods, Bible-banging tent school.”

“Charleston, South Carolina, is about a 90-minute drive northwest of Beaufort and Parris Island. It is an old city reborn with new charm and an influx of snowbirds from the North attracted by its ease, comfort and accessibility.”

“Cops can deprive people of their freedom. They are sworn to serve and protect. They work for us and they belong to, basically, a service industry, laboring in conditions that are sometimes threatening, often dangerous yet interesting.”

“During the course of any normal day, I usually pay more attention to assembling a grocery list than I do to reading movie reviews, although there are a more than a few film critics who bring huge insight to their work.”

“Everyone has a smart phone, and everything is recorded. One event spills into another. Conclusions come quickly at the near total expense of consideration of what just actually happened.”

“For millions on the outside looking in, this is where they want to live - America.”

“I am, if nothing else, an optimist.”

“I don't think we treat people very well in the media, both as customers - and I call them customers - of newspapers and magazines, or TV news, and we don't understand that the greatest story that we could tell, each and every day, is the story of the people around us.”

“I think blogging, by and large, is basically therapy. And I'm sure, and I know, that there are some terrific bloggers and some legitimate bloggers. But I think, by and large, a huge percentage of people who are blogging are doing it for self-therapy.”

“If you want proof of what the country is really all about, just walk through the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Here it is, in the faces of the victims, in the stories of bravery, in the souls and memory of the survivors, the next of kin.”

“It's your glove, your baseball glove. It's got a soul, a memory all its own, and a future that never fades because it has never let go of the grasp the past has on you and so many others.”

“Most cops are not looking for understanding. They work in a world filled with a sense - real or imagined - of danger lurking around each corner and every hallway. Most cops are merely looking for respect.”

“New York is about success. Boston is about resentment.”

“Reality is self-defined as the mob, any mob, writes its own history, never to be contradicted by the quiet statement of truth.”

“Rebellion has its roots in government's indifference and incompetence.”

“Sadly, it seems as if there is no longer any real history. Just momentary reactions to events that disappear like sky-writing with items like Twitter, texts, Meerkat, Snapchat, and Instagram.”

“Sixteen times a year, all thirty-two NFL teams give us what we're looking for: speed, skill, violence, fantasy league orgasms and a final score. No confusion. No doubt. No indecision. A winner and a loser.”

“That's one of the great gifts of this, the greatest of all games, baseball: it allows you, still, to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn't begun to batter optimism.”

“The middle-class ladder has rungs that no longer exist for many trying to climb higher. Instead, for too many, in too many places, their chore is simply trying to hang on.”

“The New York City police department is more representative of the city it serves than most law firms, university faculties, and media companies.”

“Unlike other professions - doctor, lawyer, teacher, journalist, sales clerk, stock broker - when a cop makes a bad mistake, it could mean someone is dead. They take home mental baggage unlike anything carried in almost every other job.”

“We have more tools at hand, literally, to make life easier and more productive than ever. We have Google, Wikipedia, iPads, iPhones, iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, and 600 cable channels. We can shop, pay bills, order food, and get nearly everything delivered, all of it with the touch of a finger on a device in the palm of our hand.”