John Oates Quotes

I retired when the Supreme Court rose for the summer recess in 2009, and a couple of weeks later I drove north from Washington with no regrets about the prior 19 years or about the decision to try living a more normal life for whatever time might remain.

When I retired from tennis I wanted to do other things with my life.

I still love hockey. It's just I'm at a different stage of my life and I think I'm just ready to grow in other ways outside of just being a hockey player.

I tried to make a distinct point that I wasn't retiring - that I was moving on.

Boxing's all I know. At 40, what else am I going to do?

The money, the fame, if that comes, that's fantastic. But at the end of the day, my aim is to go to sleep at night content and have a purpose, and to know that I'm not swapping my life for money and some mind-numbing boring job, making easy money and protecting my brain.

I've been able to make a good living as a musician, but now it's time to do all the other stuff.

My life isn't much different than when I worked full time as a journalist.

I was working at a phone company. I got tired of my life and wanted to change it, so I did.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

I'll be 65 in September and I work as much as I want to, take cruises with Kay, relax with my family, do everything in moderation, because I want to enjoy my life.

It's time for me to do things I like so I will be happy, my wife will be happy, my friends will be happy. I just want to do something I'm proud of. It's time for me to change. I could sign with a company for 10 movies and I'm the king of video and so what?

I've worked hard my whole life, since I was a little kid. But now it's a point in my life now where I can just enjoy it, but at the same time I still need to work.

The positives of retiring outweighed the positives of returning and my desire to still play.

Now I am ready to set new goals and start a new career for myself outside of the ring.

You can't work all your life.

Every time I've moved, my work has changed radically.

There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything - millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace.

You want to strike that happy medium: the balance of being able to find creative satisfaction in your profession, be able to afford a roof over your head, but still have the freedom to live a relatively normal life.

I don't want to bust my butt for the rest of my life, like my parents.

When I came into the business, things changed a lot, and my life was in a real state of flux.

By 30, I was separated from my husband, and I clearly remember sitting in my lovely office with a magnificent view, staring at a very lucrative pay stub, and bursting into tears because I was just miserable. So I had to make a decision: Keep following my plan, or be honest with myself and search for my true passion.

Wrestling is all I've known since I was 17 so it's time I let myself focus on other things and explored other parts of myself.

I'm not driven by money anymore.

Writing makes everything else in my life okay; it makes everything make sense.