Theo Epstein Quotes

I won twenty-eight games in thirty-five and I couldn't believe my eyes when the Cards sent me a contract with a cut in salary. Mr Rickey said I deserved a cut because I didn't win thirty games.

Well, that kind of puts a damper on even a Yankee win.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.

On paper we might be the best team in the league. We’ve got great players on this team who accomplished so much. We just couldn’t put it together.

The poetry is all in the anticipation, for there is none in reality.

A transition from an author's book to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

Aren't fairy godmothers supposed to be nice and make you feel better about yourself? ...No, you're confusing fairy godmothers with sales clerks.

It's unfair to expect the USTA, just because they make this pot of money, to just snap their fingers and make champions. It's not simple, and anyone who thinks it is hasn't really looked underneath the hood to see how the engine works.

And it was pretty clear that no prince was showing up, or at least that he was really late.

If you like the book, you'll hate the movie.

You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing assunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.

Afterwards I said Chris Webber was going to leave as a free agent and Sacramento would go back to expansionism.

I expected more from literature than from real, naked life.

It's like thinking you're going to heaven, but when you get there it turns out to be Cleveland.

Gee, this isn't like I imagined it would be in the bathtub.

We lost 14 straight. Then we had a game rained out and it felt so good we had a victory dinner.

Your dreams may not be happening, and things aren't turning out the way you expected, but that doesn't mean your life is spinning out of control. It just means you're not in control.

Because life doesn't work that way. You can do everything perfectly. Do everything you think you're supposed to be doing. Fulfill every expectation that other people may have. And you still won't get the results you think you deserve. Life is crazy and maddening and often makes no sense.

Sometimes during a show or a film, while you're shooting it, you'll think, "This is great, it's going to be fantastic, the script is incredible, and the actors are great, and everything is working out brilliantly." And then you see it, and you kind of go, "Oh god, it's not as good as I thought it was," and it doesn't get an audience to watch it. It only does a couple of festivals and then dies and whatever.

That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.

There is nothing more frustrating than a good example.

I had a dream that I would be here this week, receiving something from the president, but I thought it would be the front door key.

The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate who left campus that day headed for New York city, ready to offer the world his talent. The world, I discovered. was not all that interested.

We soon get through with nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy.

I had a map on my wall that had a circle around Lubbock and then giant arrows pointing toward New York City and Los Angeles. Written across both arrows were the words 'Toward Civilization.' Of course, by the time I got to New York, I realized there really isn't any civilization.