"Some people think I'm mean, until they get to know me."

"I've always been my own hitting coach."

"I'm the kind of a player who, if you give me something good to hit, I'm going to swing at it. Otherwise, there's nothing else you can do."

"I'm just another player that comes in and comes out. Everybody's time is up at some point, I don't think that's my problem. I'm just going to keep on trying like I normally do."

"I'm the same guy I've always been. I'm the same guy now as when I was hitting 50 home runs. I don't change."

"I come to play everyday."

"Whatever country you go to, you need to definitely follow the rules. So I believe it's very important for people, wherever they go, any immigrant should know or should try to learn something about the culture."

"I'm just trying to work hard every day, trying to be a better player and one day, to be right there with them, one of those special hitters."

"I showed people that it's not about guessing what people can do. It's about saying, 'Here, show me what you can do.'"

"This jersey that we're wearing today doesn't "say "Red Sox. It says Boston."

"I just love the feeling from the fans and when I'm walking on deck I can hear people screaming and wishing you the best. That puts you into the game more than anything."

"All I like to do is work every day and have an idea what I want to do."

"My mom, she wasn't like a baseball mother who knew everything about the game. She just wanted me to be happy with what I was doing."

"I swing hard all the time. That's what I've done my whole life-hit."

"I just want to play baseball."

"I'm the kind of guy that I never forget my teammates."

"This is our f---g city. And nobody is going to dictate our freedom."

"I'm going to be done when I've decided that I'm done."

"You just have to go as far as you can go. Everyone works his way up."

"I'm a winner, I play to win, I want to make good things go on around me."

"They pick me [to be tested for steroids] every time. I don't know why. I don't know if it's because I'm a big guy, or what, but all I know is all they are going to find is a lot of rice and beans."

"Everybody has something to prove each year. Everybody has a responsibility in this game. Even the batboy."

"I'm not thinking home run, I just want to put a good swing on the ball. When you go looking for home runs, you get off of your swing. So you don't think of homers when you go up to the plate."

"Life is a challenge that you need. There's things in life that are going to throw you into the ground, but if you learn how to get up, that means you are not a quitter."

"My timing’s a little off. But I’m about to get hotter than Jamaica in the middle of August."

"Sometimes you just don't feel the same everyday, it doesn't matter what you do, but when you have people looking forward to seeing you perform for them, that puts you in the mood, and that's natural in Boston. That's why it's such a special place to play."

"The DOCF all started when I made a trip to a local hospital in the Dominican Republic. I was visiting children who had received life-saving heart care operations. I couldn't help but think that in another life, one of these kids could be my own son. If it wasn't for baseball, I may have remained in the Dominican Republic and who knows where life would have taken me. It was then that I knew that I had to use the gift that I received, to play baseball, to do whatever I could to give back."

"I don't try to hit the ball 500 feet. It looks good when you hit it 500 feet, but as long as it goes over the fence, it's a home run. When you swing hard, it takes a little bit of recognition away from you. The power you're trying to increase - you're not all the way through it with your vision."

"I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so I don't like to get all quiet."

"Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto."

"Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it."

"If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt?"

"Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character."

"I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out."

"We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail."

"If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever."

"Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings"

"If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve."

"All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints."

"A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit."

"I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally."

"I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met."

"Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat."

"It's just a penis, right? Probably no worse for you than smoking."

"This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight."

"Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute."

"I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer."

"At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me."

"Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?"

"I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed."