George Plimpton

“The first rule of participatory journalism is to be a good sport.”

“The only time I'm not a participant is when I'm asleep.”

“The worst thing about being a writer is that you're always working.”

“I've always felt that the best memoirs are not about the writer, but about the people the writer has known.”

“It's a great relief to be a participant. It's a great relief to be in the game.”

“I think the amateur is the quintessential American. The person who loves what they do.”

“The best interviews are those that are not interviews at all, but conversations.”

“The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of thought.”

“What I do is not a stunt. I'm a writer. I'm a journalist. I'm a participant.”

“I suppose that the great appeal of sports is that it's a very clear-cut world of winners and losers.”

“The smaller the ball, the more formidable the wordplay.”

“The writer's function is to invent, not to chronicle.”

“The fun of it is to see if you can do it.”

“To be a writer is to have a great deal of time to yourself.”

“The secret of a happy life is to live a life of ambition. Not the ambition to win power or fame or money, but an ambition to be fully alive to the world and all its wonders.”

“The most difficult thing in the world is to start a sentence.”