Quotes

The Olympics are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I've worked so hard to get this far.

A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all.

Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.

You have to know what you're doing to help people and have an important stance in life. You can only do that by staying focused, and I can't lose focus for a second.

I've just been competitive all my life. That draws from a competitive family. We're all athletes, and we're all trying to win no matter what it is, whether it's Scrabble or basketball.

On their deathbed, do people think: 'I wish I'd spent more time with my Ferrari'? Or do they say: 'I wish I'd spent more time watching my kids grow up, I wish I'd spent more time country walking?' It's about the things that matter in life, and how we have an economy that better reflects that.

Good businesses are the lifeblood of the economy. But, as responsible business people up and down the country know, the system too often allows good businesses to be undercut by bad.

The guitar saved me from a life of crime as a teenager.

I'm kind of a firm believer that songs can have a shelf life with an artist.

I'm basically a happy person. I'm content with my life and my wife and my family. But you do reach a point where you start to question the absolutes that are supposedly out there, and you realize that there simply are no absolutes.

'World On Fire' isn't necessarily a profound statement about where we are as a planet. It's about living life to the fullest... carpe diem.

I never really look at life and worry about missed opportunities.

The value of life is not in its duration, but in its donation. You are not important because of how long you live, you are important because of how effective you live.

Our life is the sum total of all the decisions we make every day, and those decisions are determined by our priorities.

Don't die old, die empty. That's the goal of life. Go to the cemetery and disappoint the graveyard.

You weren't born just to live a life and to die; you were born to accomplish something specifically. Matter of fact, success is making it to the end of your purpose; that is success... Success is not just existing. Success is making it to the end of why you were born.

We live in a disposable, 'cast-off and throw-away' society that has largely lost any real sense of permanence. Ours is a world of expiration dates, limited shelf life, and planned obsolescence. Nothing is absolute.

Tel Aviv is buzzing with so much life, you could bottle it and sell it as honey, and even Jerusalem has a certain fizz. But if you want to see anger, go to Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon.

My own zigzag path through life led me back to Santa Cruz in the early Eighties, and I have revisited regularly since. The place hasn't changed: head in the clouds, backside on the hills and feet in the ocean - one of the most decent and beautiful places on earth.

As I was writing, I realised I wasn't sufficiently extrovert to gather enough interesting souls with tall tales around me. I was no Louis Theroux. But neither was I interested in exploring my inner life in public, in the manner of a Jonathan Raban.

Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.

I think that carrying on a life that is meant to be private in public is a breach of taste, common sense, and mental hygiene.

Football has done so much for me, given me friends, family, given me life lessons that now I can use in the operating room or just as a leader.

I wanted to be completely and totally entrenched, immersed in this football life, this culture all the way, so you don't even have a thought, an inkling, that my mind is somewhere else.

I spent three weeks lamenting, ruminating and praying because football had been part of my life since age 6. Then I moved on. I'm glad I always had another clear plan. Several of my FSU teammates did not and do not. It's hard to leave a sport that is embedded in you.