Richard Ben Cramer

“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.”

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

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

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

“People think of DiMaggio as the exemplar of a 'golden age,' and in some ways, he was. But in the most fundamental ways, he was really the first modern athletic superstar because, number one, he ushered in the era of big money; and number two, he never did anything except that - he never really took another job in another industry.”

“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.”

“It's like a drug, the feeling you could make a difference....”

“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.”

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

“What good was being the king of the rackets in Newark, N.J., if you couldn't have DiMaggio at your dinner table?”

“The expectations for a nonfiction writer are awful high.”

“At every step in his life, DiMaggio was what New Yorkers wanted in a hero.”

“Even if you had the wherewithal to embarrass a reporter, there was no mechanism to do it. And in most cases, you might as well save your breath because the reporter had no shame anyway.”

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

“TV is set up to be just a shout fest: Is this good for Republicans or bad for Republicans; is this good for Cain or bad for Cain... tell me something that I need to know.”

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

“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.”

“There is not often much policy discussion with the Bushes. There isn't much introspection. Several generations of Bush men could pass by in which the great questions of humankind will go undiscussed.”

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