On draft day, I wasn't really nervous at all. Then you turn on the draft, the first five picks go by, and then you still thinking, 'Oh man, I don't know where I'm going to go.' It's really just, by the time draft hits, that's when you get nervous.
I've been a lot of places and worked with a lot of different guys. High draft picks. Low draft picks.
I see myself as the No. 1 player in the draft, but it is what it is. You can just take it day-by-day, put in the work, and the draft is going to be the outcome of whatever the draft is.
It doesn't matter who picks me up, I'm going to try and be a franchise player for them.
I have no preferred team, but everyone wants to go No. 1 in the draft. Even the guy who gets picked last in the draft wants to go No. 1. But I just know that whoever picks me, I'm going to be excited to play for that team, and I can't wait to see myself in 'Madden' on that team.
Whoever picks me up, I'm going to try and play my best for, to be the best player on the field at any given time.
I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.
The tragic evils of our life are so commonly unintentional. We did not start out for that poor, cheap goal. That aim was not in our minds at all....Look to the road you are walking on. He who picks up one end of [a] stick picks up the other.He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
How can I tell the eighth or ninth man on the team that I want you to work hard every day and I want you to improve and get better, but while you're doing that you're not going to get any minutes?
We have to build our own power. We have to win every single political office we can, where we have a majority of black people... The question for black people is not, when is the white man going to give us our rights, or when is he going to give us good education for our children, or when is he going to give us jobs-if the white man gives you anything-just remember when he gets ready he will take it right back. We have to take for ourselves.
I'm just going to get out there and on court, give it my all and that's what I want to do every day. That's what I want to be known for, and that's what I want other players to know about me, that I'm never going to give up.
A man picks a wife about the same way an apple picks a farmer.
Much of an editor's job is in fact pretty nanny-like in nature: in many ways, you're there to protect and defend, to reassure and clean up. What I ask from writers is respect. I want them to respect me enough to turn in a clean draft. I want that draft to be as good as they can make it. I want to feel the thought behind those words. And I want it to be turned in on time. It drives me wild when I get a story that's obviously slapped together, and the same can be said for a manuscript; you should respect your reader enough to give her something that reflects your best efforts.
The key is to not let the camera, which depicts nature in so much detail, reveal just what the eye picks up, but what the heart picks up as well.
I'm OK with having a really good football player with a chip on his shoulder because he's going to come to prove to not only the people that didn't draft him, but himself, that I'm a pretty good football player.