Cal Quotes

While at Cal Tech I talked a lot with Jon Mathews, then a junior faculty member; he taught me how to use the Institute's computer; we also went on hikes together.

I'm not head-strong, and I'm not egotistical. I understand certain things better now. I won't be trying to be play everyday. There's only one Cal Ripken, one Lou Gehrig and one Joe DiMaggio. What is good for them isn't necessarily good for Eric Davis.

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.

In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite.

They can shout down the head of the physics department at Cal Tech.

Cal Ripken is steady, he focuses on his job, and he's a good guy.

At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it.