To achieve lasting literature fictional or factual a writer needs perceptive vision absorptive capacity and creative strength.

Few men during their lifetime comes anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.

It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are for all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely and more interestingly.

Sports broadcasting is very open now. In the beginning you did encounter more traditional attitudes and get comments. But I'm talking about 12 years ago.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages sometimes I write them in a column sometimes in a novel sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

I had fun pretending to be a sportscaster. People always think that was a down thing for me. I had the best job in sports broadcasting for two years.

Watching people just look out for themselves I think is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society how it operates and how that reflects their so-called betters.

But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.

All of us in society are supposed to believe that cruelty to animals is wrong and that it is a good thing to prevent needless suffering. So if that is true how can meat be acceptable under any but the most extraordinary circumstances such as perhaps roasting the bird who died flying into a window?

My main concern is theater and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish and it has to do better.