All I knew about shot putting was that my [older] brother could do 44 feet. I decided I wanted to beat him. . . . So I got a shot and went to work and made up my mind to do 45 feet.
The time to hurry is in between shots. It's not over the shot. It's timing how people walk. You have to add that to the equation. If you've got somebody walking slow and they get up to the shot and take their 20 seconds, what's the aggregate time for them to hit that shot in between shots? That's what really matters. It's not the shot at hand.
I came into having an artist's career in this very sheepish and directionless way. It's hard to explain, but I was 18 years old and I was ready to go to college; that was the next step for me. Then suddenly I had a song that blew up... and I had this artist's career and I was on tour with these big names and I didn't know what I was doing.
By the time I turned 18, I moved into a little chalet of my own and felt very grown-up.
The first time I shot the hook, I was in fourth grade, and I was about five feet eight inches tall. I put the ball up and felt totally at ease with the shot. I was completely confident it would go in. I've been shooting it ever since.
We live in an extraordinary time, in which one still has the ability to mold opinion. Also, it's up for grabs. Perceptions are up for grabs in a way that it hasn't been before, which makes it really interesting. Societies that have always defined other aspects of human experience, or histories, try to hold on to it and try to find ways to continue to be the ones who do the interpreting.
No doubt, intuitions deserve respect. ...[but] I think that it is always up for grabs what an intuition is an intuition of. At a minimum, it is surely sometimes up for grabs.
The night I turned twenty-two, I drank a shot for every year. I was so drunk, I'd just walk up to people in the bar and hit them in the balls. My friends drove me home and left me propped up on the couch holding a bucket. I woke up with vomit all over me. The bucket was clean as a whistle.
When I was growing up, we would play a 10-over or 15-over game, and the asking-rate would always be high, and I would end up scoring 30 or 40 runs in 15 balls, so I built that mindset right from the beginning and still continue to bat in the same manner.
When I started making money, I immediately began buying property and fixing it up. I was always searching for the next neighborhood. The first place I bought when I was 19. I found a huge loft on the Lower East Side, almost 3,500 square feet. I did it up, turned it over, and sold it.
The climbs up the Hand of Fatima, which is 2,000 feet, and Naga Parbat, which is just over 15,000 feet, were spectacular. The Hand of Fatima and the Kaga Tondo, in Mali, is a personal favourite of mine.
Four grabs a bar with each hand and pulls himself up, easy, like he's sitting up in bed. But he is not comfortable or natural here--- every muscle in his arm stands out. it is a stupid thing for me to think when I am one hundred feet off the ground.
My life has been less like a light switch suddenly turning on, and more like a dimmer switch slowly turned up, over time, more in some moments than others.
The NBA is kind of where I've grown up, coming out of high school at 18.
A lot of people don't understand that playing in the NBA, the toughest thing is to win an NBA championship. I was in the NBA 15 years. I'd been in the playoffs. I'd been in the Finals. But it took me 15 years to finally win one.
Before every game I used to go out and shot the same shots over and over and over. In the summer time I spent a lot of time just shooting. So really it just came natural. Whether it's a tie game or down by 1 or up by five, it was always the same shot. So I always felt comfortable with the ball in my hands because it was in there a million times before.