Shoeless Quotes & Sayings

God knows I gave my best in baseball at all times and no man on earth can truthfully judge me otherwise. — Shoeless Joe Jackson

The kind of people I absolutely cannot tolerate are those who never let you forget they are religious. It seems to me that a truly religious person would let his life be example enough, would not let his religion interfere with being a human being, and would not be so insecure as to have to fawn publicly before his gods. — W.P. Kinsella

Praise the name of baseball. The word will set captives free. The word will open the eyes of the blind. The word will raise the dead. Have you the word of baseball living inside you? Has the word of baseball become part of you? Do you live it, play it, digest it, forever? Let an old man tell you to make the word of baseball your life. Walk into the world and speak of baseball. Let the word flow through you like water, so that it may quicken the thirst of your fellow man. — W.P. Kinsella

I wonder if there are soft-spoken voices who deliver assignments to all of us in various times ... It is nice to think I have company-that others dance to the muted music I hear. — W.P. Kinsella

I copied (Shoeless Joe) Jackson's style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter. — Babe Ruth

If I go to a baseball game, I hear 'Shoeless Joe,' but otherwise, I hear 'toe pick' five times a day. No matter how many more movies I make, that'll be on my gravestone. — D. B. Sweeney

Hey big mouth, how do you spell triple? — Shoeless Joe Jackson

Like most scavengers, Sunil knew how he appeared to the people who frequented the airport: shoeless, unclean, pathetic. By winter's end, he had defended against this imagined contempt by developing a rangy, loose-hipped stride for exclusive use on Airport Road. It was the walk of a boy on his way to school, taking his time, eating air. His trash sack was empty on this first leg of his daily route, so it could be tucked under his arm or worn over his shoulders like a superhero cape. When Sister Paulette passed by in her chauffeured white van, it could be draped over his head. Sister Paulette-Toilet was how he thought of her now. He imagined her riding down Airport Road looking for children more promising than he. — Katherine Boo

At her feet was a largish basket woven of twigs. He didn't look into it; he couldn't. Every now and then her shoeless foot would nip out from beneath the dark hem of her skirt and give the basket a little push, and because of its rounded bottom, the basket rocked for a time. Then the green foot would appear again, and start the rocking over. — Gregory Maguire

I thought back to med school, when a patient had told me that she always wore her most expensive socks to the doctor's office, so that when she was in a patient's gown and shoeless, the doctor would see the socks and know she was a person of substance, to be treated with respect. (Ah, there's the problem - I was wearing hospital-issue socks, which I had been stealing for years! — Paul Kalanithi

Those for whom there was, first dimly, then more bright, then dimly again, a possibility. Which, though dimly, perhaps still exists, but which they know, have somehow always known, would never come to anything. They were never, how can I put this, going to be a part of life. It is as though, going through a landscape, through the seasons, in the same general direction as everybody else, they never quite made it to the road. Through the years, humanity, like a tide of refugees or pilgrims, shoeless and in rags, or in Mercedes, station wagons, running shoes, were traveling on, joined by others, falling by the way. And we, joined though we may be, briefly, by other strays, or by road travelers on their little detours, nonetheless never quite joined the continuing procession, of life and birth, never quite found or made it to the road. Whose voice is this? Not here. Not mine. — Renata Adler

The world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome. — Jedediah Berry

There are boys here who have to mend their shoes whatever way they can. There are boys in this class with no shoes at all. It's not their fault and it's no shame. Our Lord had no shoes. He died shoeless. Do you see Him hanging on the cross sporting shoes? Do you, boys? — Frank McCourt

Those blanked-out eternities at the airport. Getting there, waiting there, standing shoeless in long lines. Think about it. We take off our shoes and remove our metal objects and then enter a stall and raise our arms and get body-scanned and sprayed with radiation and reduced to nakedness on a screen somewhere and then how totally helpless we are all over again as we wait on the tarmac, belted in, our plane eighteenth in line, and it's all ordinary, it's routine, we make ourselves forget it. That's the thing."
She said, "What thing?"
"What thing. Everything. It's the things we forget about that tell us who we are. — Don DeLillo

When I was up there at the plate, my purpose was to get on base anyway I could, whether by hitting or by getting hit. — Shoeless Joe Jackson

Remember what I've told you. Looks can often deceive you. A poor man can don the robes of a prince and a prince can be shoeless in the street. We judge people by what their actions are, not by the clothes they wear. (Eleni) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I ain't afraid to tell the world that it didn't take school stuff to help a fella play ball. — Shoeless Joe Jackson

Four.
That's the number of people who saw me hiding around the corner from my own apartment in just a skirt and a bra. Eleven.
That's the number of ant bites I got on my shoeless feet.
Twenty-seven.
That's the number of times I was tempted to do myself physical harm because I am an IDIOT.
One.
That's the number of times I tried not to cry, but failed. — Cora Carmack

Most writers are unhappy with film adaptations of their work, and rightly so. 'Field of Dreams,' however, caught the spirit and essence of 'Shoeless Joe' while making the necessary changes to make the work more visual. — W.P. Kinsella