Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The joy sometimes is in the simple beauty.
So much of life, so much of work, is luck.
I think at its best, sport does bring us together.
'Good Morning America' is television to a fare-thee-well.
Bill Russell was the pivot on which the whole sport turned.
Statues of sports stars are all the rage - especially in baseball.
In Hollywood, writers are considered only the first draft of human beings.
If I'd grown up in Sao Paulo, I'm sure I would've been a great soccer fan.
All sorts of famous sports people have been suspended for extended periods.
Majesty is a thing of beauty to behold, whatever the particular enterprise.
She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes.
NPR allowed me to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture.
You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches.
Hockey is the only place where a guy can go nowadays and watch two white guys fight.
The dollar is a winner. The euro is a tie. Get off the dime, Europe, and play to win.
I think I would die if I couldn't get to the typewriter every day. I really need that.
You have to do what the market requires of you... You either keep swimming, or you sink.
Usually when an athlete gets a reputation it sticks with him, even when he's an old man.
The strike zone should be what the rule book says it is and not a personal idiosyncrasy.
I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.
The Cowboys were never America's team any more than Anthony Weiner was America's congressman.
Owners own teams so that they might move them to another municipality with better luxury boxes.
Don't dismiss Auriemma and UConn just because their excellence shines on the female side of the coin.
You're writing about young, vibrant people; there are wins and losses. In other words, it's great drama.
That's the greatest compliment I can get: when somebody from Key West says, 'Hey, Bubba.' That means I'm in!
Johnny U was an American original, a piece of work like none other, excepting maybe Paul Bunyan and Horatio Alger.
I'll forever be grateful to NPR that they gave me such extraordinary freedom... It was 37 years of a fond relationship.
Pete Rose may not make the Hall of Fame, but a statue of him is going to be erected outside the Cincinnati Reds ballpark.
'SI' came to me and said, 'We want you to do a story on Russell as the greatest team player,' which I certainly agreed with.
In the television era, the second week of the Olympics is reserved for what is considered the marquee event: track and field.
Yes, the Masters is too stylish to be an American icon. It's as out of character for Uncle Sam as a McDonald's is for France.
I think one of the most immoral things is college football and basketball, where everybody is making money except the players.
There are some books that get huge numbers of positive reviews, but reading them satiates people. They say, 'I've read enough now'.
ESPN is all meat and potatoes. It's pretty much scouting reports. There isn't a great deal of humor, and when there is, it's pretty sophomoric.
On Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., there are statues of five Confederate luminaries and then, incongruously in this company, one of Arthur Ashe.
Sport is an art: it has incredible appeal everywhere on this earth, and it fills so many human hearts with passion that it's impossible to dismiss.
I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."
While swimming was always a spotlight sport, I was, if you will, sort of present at the creation when gymnastics became the new star lead-off hitter.
If you're a white kid growing up and you see a Black player and he's got the name of your college or your town across his chest, that means something.
I do honestly believe that, in the 21st century, sport is the most significant cultural element in this imperfect world. It calls for serious attention.
Several NBA teams got their best gates every season when they scheduled a doubleheader and booked the Globetrotters and their stooges for the opening game.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for abiding me. And now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I bid you goodbye and take my leave.
It's still the tradition for various football powerhouses to pay guarantees to schools with cream-puff teams to come on over to our place and submit to massacre.
If there ever was an 'America's team,' it would be itty-bitty, little Green Bay, stuck way up there somewhere, owned by the salt-of-the-Earth citizens themselves.
I think every time I can find a story that touches that human nerve, and even sometimes makes you cry, I think that I've found something that I'll like very much.
I had gone to work for 'Newsweek', left 'Newsweek' and went to work for 'Vanity Fair,' and then went back to 'Newsweek'. I came back to 'SI' as a contract writer.
I am something of a ham. Yeah, I'd always been a writer. But in high school, I acted in plays. So it wasn't as if you had to drag the words out of my vocal chords.
Nowadays, of course, flesh peddlers and scouting services identify the best athletes when they are still in junior high. Prospects are not allowed to sneak up on us.
It's fascinating, isn't it, that whereas so many of our statues have been of military leaders, now it may well be sports stars who are the ones more likely to be so honored.
Nothing made me happier than to hear from literally hundreds of listeners who would tell me how much the commentaries revealed about a subject they otherwise had never cared much for.