Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.
Being a great physical athlete is wonderful, and you need it at this level to be able to train and prepare accordingly. But the closer it comes time to perform, the ratio switches. When you're in camp, it's 90 percent physical and 10 percent mental. But as you get to fight night, it's the opposite.
If an athlete takes a shortcut - literally, for example, by running a street that shortens the marathon route by a quarter mile - he or she doesn't have an insurmountable advantage. But it's an unfair advantage, and in a field of equally matched athletes, it's more than enough to make a difference.
In climbing, sponsors typically support an athlete but provide very little direction, giving the climber free rein to follow his or her passion toward whatever is inspiring. It's a wonderful freedom, in many ways similar to that of an artist who simply lives his life and creates whatever moves him.
Balancing trying to be an athlete trying to get ready for WrestleMania, training twice a day, to everything you do at the office to remembering that you have a wife and kids and everything else - it's challenging, but you just make it happen. In some ways, it's no different than anyone else's life.
I remember as a kid watching one of the Olympic games, and I was cheering for a big track athlete. He was the favorite to win, and he lost. I realized in that moment the pain he felt was so much greater than the pain that those who never thought they were going to win would have felt had they lost.
I know I will have to come to forgiveness and acceptance of what has happened for me to go on and be happy in the future. And I know I will get there eventually. I wish him all the best in the future, as a person and as an athlete ... I feel privileged to have witnessed a part of his golfing career.
I don't recommend steroids for everyone, and I don't recommend growth hormones for everyone, but for certain individuals, I truly believe, because I've experimented with it for so many years, that it can make an average athlete a super athlete. It can make a super athlete-incredible. Just legendary.
Michelle Kwan means more to the United States Olympic Committee than maybe any athlete that's every performed. She's a leader, she's been gracious, she's somebody to cherish forever. She's a real loss to the United States Olympic Committee, to the United States of America and, I think, to the world.
As a former college athlete, I know the importance of sports in the lives of women and girls, and I couldn't be more thrilled to join forces with NWSL and U.S. Soccer to ensure professional women athletes are elevated as the entire country can watch and be inspired by their strength and athleticism.
I would say facing the obstacles surrounding the day-to-day pressures of an elite athlete at a very young age was not the easiest task. Learning to deal with the nerves and feeling the pressure of representing my country, all while wanting to achieve my own dreams, was a big obstacle to plow through.
The sport of wrestling is a tremendous builder of the values and characteristics which are needed to succeed in any walk of life. Much of what I have managed to achieve in life I owe directly to the years I spent in the wrestling room, as an athlete and a coach. Wrestling is a great educational tool.
I was a runner and a soccer player living in Okinawa, Japan and I didn't have recruiters coming in to recruit me for sports. So how many kids out there and planning to go to college are super stud athletes but don't have a chance because they come from some podunk town and no one comes to watch them?
Was it a risky move? Yes, but at that moment, the reason why I came out is I thought it wasn't going to be a big deal. Maybe I was naive. Maybe I thought it was 2014, and people will understand that there's gay NFL players. There's gay athletes everywhere. But I was clearly wrong. It was a huge deal.
Over the last three years, UCLA has helped me grow as an athlete, a scholar, and a member of the community. I have made some mistakes along the way; however, I am grateful that I made those mistakes backed by such a supportive and positive university so that I could learn from them and better myself.
I don't have any ill will towards any of my opponents. I understand we are the highest calibre of athlete in this sport, and we will both go and give it our all. But I don't want anyone to misinterpret what I am saying: when we step into that octagon and we touch gloves, I am going to break his face.
Oosthuizen's red spot is a classic example of what's known in sports psychology as a process goal-a technique by which the athlete is required to focus on something, however minor, to prevent them from thinking about other things: in Oosthuizen's case, all the ways he could possibly screw up the shot.
I don't recommend steroids for everyone, and I don't recommend growth hormones for everyone. But for certain individuals, I truly believe, because I've experimented with it for so many years, that it can make an average athlete a super athlete. It can make a super athlete - incredible. Just legendary.
One of the common traits of outstanding performers-coaches, athletes, managers, sales representatives, executives, and others who face a daily up/down, win/lose accounting system-is that a rejection, that is, defeat, is quickly forgotten, replaced eagerly by pursuit of a new order, client, or opponent.
It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way.
I'm not just retiring from the runway, I'm retiring from all modeling. God, I love saying that! When I was 18, my mom said I have to have a plan. I decided I'd leave on top. I want to be like the athletes who seem stuck in time. When you see them at 50, you say they probably can still run like a champ.
I think we have tremendous media covering the sport of boxing, even if boxing is a little bit lost in popularity with MMA sports. And I think that with the show 'Lights Out' it's going to get more attention to the sport, and it's going to put more attention to the problems that athletes in general have.
As an athlete, success is not just about winning; it is about working hard and giving it all you have. I have always taken one match at a time and worked hard; when I succeeded, I worked further on the aspects of the game which worked for me; when I failed, I listed out my weaknesses and worked on them.
I'm not the athlete I was when I was training for the Olympics in '92 or when I was working out every single day. I have to live in moderation: I work out three or four days a week, and I smile while I'm working out - I really do enjoy it. I work out with my girlfriends and make it a social competition.
It's an incredible feeling, 110,000 people energy at that level. What I realized from watching the first day of competition was that athletes that got excited and happy and got the fans into it and clapping, they did better. The athletes that took it too seriously, they didn't do as well as they'd hoped.
Jim Thorpe is someone I've always loved. He was an Olympic athlete, you know, and a football player from back in the day. I'd love to play him. And then there's a guy called Iceman who was a top hit man for the mob. I would love to play him. Actually, it's sort of in the works, so I hope it goes through.
I decided to become a teacher because I thought it would be a great career where I could wear different hats. You're an academic one moment, and you're a psychologist the next moment, an athlete the next moment... when you are out on the playground or coaching...so it enables you to play different roles.
By being an athlete, I have uncovered so many other ways to express my beauty. Being a strong, fearless woman makes me feel beautiful. I love the way I look and feel when I am two hours into my training and my skin is glistening with sweat and my clothes are drenched because I have given it all I've got.
Twyla's works are complex, and they really push you as an athlete and push you spiritually as well. Before doing a Twyla ballet, you have to get everything in order: You have to get a good night's sleep, you have to eat well, you have to be in great shape, and then you just go and leave it all out there.
Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.
Almost nothing worthwhile is easy, and it's hard to just jump in and be good at something difficult right off the bat... The only reliable way to succeed at anything is to actually do it, repeatedly, with concentrated effort. True for individuals, and true for organizations. Athletes, artists, businesses.
All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it's impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn't left an imprint through the generations. Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me - I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us.
The biggest thing for me with charity is awareness. Obviously as an athlete, I have an opportunity to make people more aware. The average person doesn't have that opportunity, so the best way is to spare some money, clothing, food - something. Most of us have a little excess of something that we can give.
I was an athlete, so I hung out with the jocks. I was smart, so I hung out with the nerdy kids. I was also into theater, so I hung out with the misfits... So I was always in different groups, and those groups never quite overlapped. The racial part of it was just another one of those groups, in one sense.
Everybody used to say that baseball players can't dress and athletes can't dress. You know, a lot of athletes now are trying to prove everybody wrong, though there are some athletes that try too hard and try to do over-the-top things. But me, I try to be simple and just make whatever I'm wearing look good.
There is such a rich sporting culture in Western Sydney, one that nurtured my sporting aspirations. Having Penrith Whitewater Stadium right at my doorstep was such an amazing advantage. It was a springboard to my success as an athlete, and I feel really fortunate to have grown up in this part of the world.
The greatest are an inspiration for all the kids who wake up early in the morning. Everyone watches you, is inspired by you and wants to be you. So you influence society. That's what being more than an athlete means. I want more kids to have that opportunity. I want everybody to start with the same chance.
Today, people idolize athletes and celebrities - and yes, highly successful and visionary business people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but not the innovators who perhaps have not seen such high-flying levels of success. Can anyone name the inventors of GPS, which has such a huge impact on our lives today?
The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.
As an athlete, everyone was always like, 'Listen to your body.' Whether it's an injury or whether it's just a nagging ache, that can affect your progress just because you think 'Oh, I'll push through it today' and then you can't work out for two weeks. I've learned that, as a skater, I'm very aware of that.
I always wanted to be a professional athlete, it just took me a while to realise it would be in racing. I played field hockey competitively for Ontario since I was 13, 14. Then I tried for the national side and made it. But it was so competitive. The girls were just so big and strong. I was getting crushed.
I really didn't realise until I got back the work that goes into a performance. You're like an athlete - if you haven't been practising things tighten up. I had to do a lot of practice work, but I got through it. Even when I was 21 I would have a 40-minute nap on the day of a show, and I will still do that.
Much in the way Olympic athletes optimize their game by paying an enormous - borderline maniacal - amount of attention to things like diet, exercise, sleep, and of course the essential R&R, we all would do well to pay more attention to those key aspects of our lives that comprise our overall health equation.
Colleges seem to want candidates that are so well-rounded they'd have to be two different people use together with mutually exclusive characteristics! They have to be gung ho athletes and sensitive artists, studious nerds and gregarious social networkers, future rulers of the universe and selfless altruists.
LeBron james came, and he gets $10 million a year. There was no stigma or blemish, like you have with one-and-done. Now people say, "He's not a student, he's an athlete." Well, of course he's not a student! He's here for one year and he told you he's here for one year, and the school took him with open arms.
You look at a Pete Rose to be the terrific athlete he is and then he falls on hard times, but when he played the game, I got something from the way he played the game because he hustled every play, and just because he had one mistake in his life, am I supposed to throw back everything that I gained from him?
You don't have to look like an Under Armour mannequin to be an athlete. A lot of people probably think I'm not athletic or don't even try to work out or whatever, but I do. Just because you're big doesn't mean you can't be an athlete. And just because you work out doesn't mean you're going to have a 12-pack.
My father's NFL dreams never really felt like motivation to me, but it was something to aspire to. He was such a great athlete, the least I could do is try and use my athletic talent to represent my country in a different way. He represented as a Marine. Maybe I could do something to represent as an athlete.
It might take a while but I think the rap game is the people that can do it. We're all role models more than athletes because athletes don't wear clothes like the kid in the hood and they don't walk and talk like the kids in the hood. We're closer to them than anybody because they can look at us and see them.
I'm an athlete, so I can get up one day and run and it wouldn't bother me. I don't get the time because I work for long hours every day. Being constantly on the move itself helps me stay fit. I don't go to a gym. I use the stairs, not the lift. I'm not into fitness, but I feel I should start, as it's healthy.