Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

It's good when you're out there on a tennis court. There's nowhere to hide. It's all you, tactically, physically, mentally.

Football doesn't build character, it reveals character.

On the pitch, I argue, I shout, I talk rubbish and generally do anything I can to get ahead.

Everybody gets all worked up about trash talk but it is what it is - it's talk... You ask any player, honestly, if trash talk's gonna affect how hard they play, because if a little trash talk affects how hard they can play, it just lets us know that they were holding back or weren't playing harder or as hard as they could.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

I played all kinds of sports when I was young: tennis, handball, basketball, some soccer. I focused on basketball when I was 16 or 17 and then came to the U.S. when I was 20.

My definition of winning at squash is playing and surviving, and I've never lost a match.

A major final to a tennis player is sacred ground. Short of any type of serious injury - soft-tissue tears, serious orthopedic injuries or a major illness like throwing up, dehydration or cramping - you keep going, especially in the final of a Slam.

I try to show a little bit of excitement, only when I'm on the court, but off the court I'm just chill.

I've never been cold during a big game. It's the adrenaline. You're always moving.

You don't want to let the other team feed off your outward physical demeanor. But at the same time, you can't go out and play this game and not expect to just be angry and be competitive and be excited and have that fire in your belly.

I don't think patient would be the first word that anybody that knows me would describe me as. But I think that's anybody in competitive sports.

It is very easy to make athletes, and it is very difficult to make rugby players with that rugby instinct. I would like to think I have got a bit of rugby instinct and have become more of a rugby athlete along the way.

The power of the human will to compete and the drive to excel beyond the body's normal capabilities is most beautifully demonstrated in the arena of sport.

It was tough, I gave everything I had on those match points but she just came up with better shots. I still find it very hard to believe. Its amazing.

Tennis is a funny game; unbelievable highs and the lows are just as low.

It is in the movements of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately.

It was a match I lost, rather than she won [on Serena Williams winning with an apparent cramp injury at Wimbledon

It was probably when I had a game point at 3-1 in the first set and it was a really long point, and I did a passing shot after a huge rally. Maybe from then I was like, 'Okay, that's not normal.'

There are many moments during a match when you are tense, wrestling with yourself. Tennis is a lesson in self-control.

There is no room on the golf course for anger or self-pity.

Baseball reveals character; golf exposes it.

You can tell a great athlete by, like, not how many times he wins, unlike when he loses. Because that's what is gonna make a swimmer.

I think boxers are the greatest athletes in all sports for the simple fact that they don't cry. That is mind-blowing. Have you ever been punched in the nose? Oh my gosh, it hurts so bad. They have to go back to corner, where some little man yells at them. 'Shut up, I just got punched in the face!'... If I was a boxer, do you know who I would hire as my corner man? My mom.

Losing is the bane and bugbear of every professional athlete's existence, but in baseball the monster seems to hang closer than in other sports, its chilly claws and foul breath palpable around the neck hairs of the infielder bending for his crosshand scoop or the reliever slipping his first two fingers off-center on the ball seams before delivering his two-and-two cut fastball.