Frank Deford Quotes

It's not a college degree that makes a writer. The great thing is to have a story to tell.

The way in which sports focuses more on the peccadilloes, lives and putative personalities of athletes and less on the finer points of playing games, I've become less interested in it. I don't want to write sports profiles.

I'm not sure sports writing is an art.

The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier.

My real heroes have always been sportswriters.

I certainly didn't think of myself as gifted. The standards for being gifted in my environment were if you were good in Little League or if you were good in football.

In writing I found something I could do at least as well as my peers, if not better.

I'm a better writer than I am a singer, and I express myself easily through writing.

Writing well about sports is as difficult as writing well about sex.

If I hadn't have been good enough at football, I'd have been a sports journalist - which is what I do now anyway. Or a cricketer. I might have been a cricketer.

I know that some of the finest writing I've ever read has been sports writing, whatever the topic was, whatever the sport they were writing about. It seems to be an area where people are allowed a little more leeway than when they're reporting on traffic jams and city-council meetings.

Greg Anthony's a good player.

I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.

I ended up switching over to journalism in college. A few weeks into freshman year, I realized that business school wasn't for me. And writing stories and reading and talking to people is something that I just enjoy doing, so I figured why not try to build up a post-basketball career with that.

I'm not a sportswriter.

Adam [Sandler] is a good basketball player, so he is a natural athlete, he worked with Sean Salisbury to make his footwork and delivery smooth, and he did a great job.

I don't have the physical talent those guys have. My hard work has made me very good.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose.

The balls do not make a writer.

I'm an actress, model and athlete, and I'd put athlete third on the list.

You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.