Bear Bryant Quotes

I used to have tears in my eyes on the way to practice because I was so focused. For me, track and field was serious business. I didn't have any friends. I was very isolated and very focused.

I don't have friends when I'm on the court, besides my team.

People who know me know that I don't talk about the play-offs. It's not an issue for me at all.

I train harder than anyone else in the world. Last year I was supposed to take a month off and I took three days off because I was afraid somebody out there was training harder. That's the feeling I go through every day - Am I not doing what somebody else is doing? Is someone out there training harder than I am? I can't live with myself if someone is.

I take it so seriously as far as meditation, notes, visualization, preparation, everything. I take it a lot more serious than a lot of people that play this sport. I'm obsessed with the game that I play.

Football is all I know.

In football, I need full concentration even though I really enjoy it.

The discipline required for athletics carried through to writing. You call it obsession. I call it discipline. By the way, I see nothing wrong with that.

We could spend time together during the day and just kind of talk and enjoy each other and enjoy the moment. But it was interesting we both knew that once you walk through the gates of that stadium, then it was on, the game was on.

I love playing football. So I go out to play football, and I don't really feel pressure. Of course, there are some days when things just don't work out as well as they do on other days, but that doesn't have anything to do with pressure.

I was only interested in scoring goals. I wasn't interested in anything else.

The only thing I've ever been interested in teaching anyone in life is cricket.

Very much alone in my work, I am almost jealous of it.

When I was playing for tips in college, I felt a fire in my soul. I had the same principle of focus that I had learned playing football.

I've always really just liked football, and I've always devoted a lot of time to it. When I was a kid, my friends would call me to go out with them, but I would stay home because I had practice the next day. I like going out, but you have to know when you can and when you can't.

I don't typically have a social life, I don't have a family, and I will stay up all night, every night, for days on end, to solve something that I think is solvable. And it's very frustrating sometimes, because I know that I'm like that, and it's not always a positive result.

I've got to be right on top of the action, or else all those people watching the game will say, 'This guy's not very good.'

I get nervous for any competition. I also get really competitive.

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

I'm not spending every second thinking about the World Cup, but it's always in my mind when I make choices and decisions.

Sports was my entire life as long as I can remember.

Me in high school, I was kind of a loner. I had a handful of friends. I'd eat my lunch in my car every day in my senior year. I went to ballet. I was a ballerina, so I was very focused on that. You kind of have to be. That was two-thirds of my week, going to ballet class.

We're sympathetic, but once you step on the field, football's football.

If I didn't swim my best, I'd think about it at school, at dinner, with my friends. It would drive me crazy.

I don't feel the breath of a thousand people over my shoulder.