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The Art of Fielding QUOTES

The Art of Fielding QUOTES

1 " Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows he’s wrong. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

2 " I'm a staunch monogamist. In practice, if not in theory. I can't help it. Do I acknowledge the oppressive, regressive nature of sexual exclusivity? Yes. Do I want that exclusivity very badly for myself? Also yes. There's probably some sort of way in which that's not a paradox. Maybe I believe in love. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

3 " Only here, long after midnight, while everyone else was sleeping, when nothing was expected of him, could Schwartz convince himself that he was working hard enough. These hours felt stolen, added to his life. The voice fell quiet. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

4 " It dawned on him—as it hadn’t before; he was dense, he was slow—that his parents were five hundred miles away. They could make him come home, they could refuse to pay the portion of his tuition they’d agreed to pay, but they couldn’t see his jeans. “Understood,” he said. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

5 " He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

6 " AVERT DISASTER, in fact, would have been a perfect school motto—the purpose of the place, as far as Schwartz could tell, was to keep three thousand would-be maniacs sedated by boredom until a succession of birthdays transformed them into adults. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

7 " Heat radiated off Henry's face. Salty snot ran down his upper lip. A majestic fart propelled him to the top of Section 12, just at the springing of the stadium's curve. He slapped the sign as if high-fiving a teamate. It gave back a game shudder. He was crusing now, darkness be damned, stripping off his sweatshirt and his long underwear top without breaking stride. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

8 " People thought becoming an adult meant that all your acts had consequences; in fact it was just the opposite. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

9 " Owen," Henry said excitedly, "I think Coach wants you to hit for Meccini."

Owen closed The Voyage of the Beagle, on which he had recently embarked. "Really?"

"Runners on first and second," Rick said. "I bet he wants you to bunt."

"What's the bunt sign?"

"Two tugs on the left earlobe," Henry told him. "But first he has to give the indicator, which is squeeze the belt. But if he goes to his cap with either hand or says your first name, that's the wipe-off, and then you have to wait and see whether--"

"Forget it," Owen said. "I'll just bunt. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

10 " This is the perfect place for you, Henry. With the right support you could become the next Aparicio. Personally, I think everyone involved—you, me, the front office—should do everything possible to make sure you wind up wearing a St. Louis Cardinals cap.”

Henry reaches up and touched his brim. “I’m wearing one right now. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

11 " You told me once that a soul isn't something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love. And you did that with more dedication than most, that work of building a soul-not for your own benefit but for the benefit of those that knew you. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

12 " So much of one's life was spent reading; it made sense not to do it alone. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

13 " She hated the namelessness of women in stories, as if they lived and died so that men could have metaphysical insights. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

14 " Literature could turn you into an asshole: he’d learned that teaching grad-school seminars. It could teach you to treat real people the way you did characters, as instruments of your own intellectual pleasure, cadavers on which to practice your critical faculties. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

15 " It was strange the way he loved her; a side long and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

16 " What would he say to her, if he was going to speak truly? He didn't know. Talking was like throwing a baseball. You couldn't plan it out beforehand. You just had to let go and see what happened. You had to throw out words without knowing whether anyone woud catch them -- you had to throw out words you knew no one would catch. You had to send your words out where they weren't yours anymore. It felt better to talk with a ball in your hand, it felt better to let the ball do the talking. But the world, the nonbaseball world, the world of love and sex and jobs and friends, was made of words. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

17 " But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric - not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football.You stood and waited and tried to still your mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see? "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

18 " The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

19 " ...a soul isn't something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding

20 " There are no whys in a person's life, and very few hows. In the end, in search of useful wisdom, you could only come back to the most hackneyed concepts, like kindness, forbearance, infinite patience. Solomon and Lincoln: This too shall pass. Damn right it will. Or Chekhov: Nothing passes. Equally true. "

― Chad Harbach , The Art of Fielding