I am fortunate to have played 15 years for my country.

Nothing surprises me anymore in the NFL.

Fortunately for a quarterback, you can play for a long time because you don’t get hit very often.

When I won the Golden Gloves in 1960, that made me realize I had a chance. And when I won at the Olympics, that sealed it: I was the champ.

The joy of doing well as a batsman for your country is much more than that little joy of going for a party and enjoying music. It is a completely different high, and I get high by performances. That’s what I enjoy now.

Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.

Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.

I’m always hungry to score.

Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.

Basketball is booming, and it’s not just an Under Armour standpoint: it’s about the game itself. Kids going out and playing and being inspired by what we do on the court.

I can’t say this enough – the food that you put into your bodies can actually help you get better grades. And it can also affect your performance in sports and other activities too. You see, when you give your body the best possible fuel, you have more energy, you’re stronger, you think more quickly.

Football coaches don’t have real problems.

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

In Boston, they love their sports celebrities. And it’s great.

I was a good football player, and I had a chance to play with some great players.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they’d be, what position they’d play and so on.

Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport.

In England, when an athlete gets to the top, we do our best to destroy him.

I was totally dominated and revered my father. I admired everything he did. He was a great sports person. He loved me. I was his only boy at that time, before my brother Billy came along.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

I played a little basketball. Some football in junior high.

I was a naturally aggressive left-back, a cut-throat tackler.

I rate Fabien Barthez and played with two great keepers in Alex Stepney and Harry Gregg.

I don’t want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be Kobe Bryant.

If you watch any good player, they’re using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They’re moving in many dimensions at once.

The more minutes you play and the more grind and physical play you endure through the course of a season, you have to re-charge and get your body right for the next season. Be in that weight room and conditioning and that kind of deal.

Everybody asks if putting is like shooting free throws. It has a very similar kind of mindset. And it’s just you, the ball, and the target.

As an athlete, you’d better laugh at yourself when you slip in the mud.

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

In India, people are really glued to the Premier League and La Liga.

As a kid, I used to see how Sachin Tendulkar used to win matches under pressure for India in Sharjah or other places. So I was always keen to repeat the same in similar situations. I don’t take pressure on myself when I am in the middle. I love pressure, and I always believe that pressure makes you more focused.

I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.

Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.

I focus on one thing and one thing only – that’s trying to win as many championships as I can.

When I was in Portugal I hardly played six-or-seven matches. Although I would train daily to keep my shape. Even then it was really difficult when I came back to get in shape and represent my country.

Football changed my life and it gave me a platform to get out my aggression and it gave me a sense of value.

The worst thing is for a player to come to a club and not be able to play.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

If you watch me during the game, I celebrate when we press the ball and it goes out.

I hope the fans have enjoyed listening as much as I’ve enjoyed doing the games. I don’t ever go to the park where I don’t have a good day. I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

I was so used to going out and winning state championships and playing in the postseason.

One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won’t have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

We all know what flopping is when we see it. The stuff that you see is where guys aren’t really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

That’s what you live for as a sportsman. You have to put up a fight.

The trouble with referees is that they know the rules, but they do not know the game.

Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they’ve taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.

My dad has kind of been the standard for me, he played 16 years in the league, and since I’ve been in the league, every year that I go through and deal with the scratches, the bumps and bruises, just the grind that it is to go through one NBA season.

Bob Houghton is a great coach and I am confident that the national team will do well under him.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

David Beckham has never impressed me.

I like playing for the purple and gold. This is where I want to finish up.

Every action has a consequence. It may be good for strengthening. And I have no doubt that lifting a lot of weights can get you stronger. I just don’t know if lifting stronger weights can keep you healthy, or it can keep you doing your job better, especially for a pro athlete.

Even if soccer is not number one in the United States, they do things very well here. There’s much our country can learn from the U.S.A., because we all know that soccer is not the main game in India. We can still do more things, like provide better facilities for the players so they can perform well.

My game is really played above time. I don’t say that like I’m saying I’m ahead of my time. I’m saying, like, if I’m on the court and I throw a pass, the ball that I’ve thrown will lead my teammate right where he needs to go, before he even knows that that’s the right place to go to.

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can’t become athletes. We’re watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.

An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame – Southern Methodist University game and doesn’t care who wins.

I try to encourage all my teammates, and I sure hope that some day all athletes – my kids, high school kids – get the same level of care I get. Because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacements, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with.

But sports carried me away from being in a gang, or being associated with drugs. Sports was my way out.