Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple.

One reason I don’t want to play in England again is because we don’t have any personalities.

I saw MotoGP on TV first, before I saw F1 and other types of car racing. It’s what I got more into. It was cool, there was good, exciting racing.

In an individual sport, yes, you have to win titles. Baseball’s different. But basketball, hockey? One person can control the tempo of a game, can completely alter the momentum of a series. There’s a lot of great individual talent.

I was acting when I was playing baseball.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

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

I can’t think without my glasses.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

The Premier League is one of the most difficult in the world. There’s five, six, or seven clubs that can be the champions. Only one can win, and all the others are disappointed and live in the middle of disaster.

I signed for Mohun Bagan and then I got the news that Bhaichung also joined the club. The first day he met me he told me that I have heard about you and you are doing well. I told everyone in my family and friends that Bhaichung told me that.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

In college, a loss is pretty devastating. That feeling kind of goes away in an 82-game season. You hate to lose, but you also have a lot more games to make up for it.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

I was a huge Mike Tyson fan growing up; his fights were always on in my house.

I read a lot. I enjoy reading a lot.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

Every night on the court I give my all, and if I’m not giving 100 percent, I criticize myself.

Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

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

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

My goal is to be number one in MMA.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

My superhero has always been Tendulkar, and it will be Tendulkar for life. He is someone who has inspired me immensely. Just watching him play for India, I used to dream of winning games for India, because he used to do it single handedly.

There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

I aspire my country eventually has a league where all players play 50 games.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

What the ISL has done is create the hype and buzz around football that it very badly needs.

I can remember earning £5,000 a game playing for Hibs at the end of the Seventies. They let me commute from London, train on the Friday and play on Saturday. That lasted until my friends at the Inland Revenue decided to take two-thirds. That wasn’t very entertaining for me.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

While playing golf today I hit two good balls. I stepped on a rake.

To be honest, there are no problems between me and Messi. People have their own opinions about who they think is the better player. It is what it is, but there is no rivalry beyond games and what happens on the pitch.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

All an agent is going to do is buy things for a player, damage his eligibility, and make the player dependent on them.

I see myself as the best footballer in the world. If you don’t believe you are the best, then you will never achieve all that you are capable of.

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.

We murdered them 0-0.

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

Once it gets down to single-digit games, you know the season’s end is approaching, and we’re all pretty physically tired.

Wrestling is intimate. You can reach out and touch the wrestlers.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

They used to call me ‚Touchdown T.‘ I remember in high school, we had homecoming, and I got in front of the pep rally, and I told them, ‚I’m going to run for three touchdowns.‘ I ran for three touchdowns, kicked the extra point, and took myself out the game.

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.

Baseball hasn’t forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven’t lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.

You throw batting practice, you warm up pitchers, you sit and cheer. You do whatever you have to do to stay on the team.

You know, I’m trying to chase rings, and that’s all I’m about. So that’s where the conversation stops for me.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

Everyone loves a win in India. No one wants to lose a match. It is the cricketer who absorbs all the pressure.

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

‚Classic.‘ A book which people praise and don’t read.

Football is unconditional love.