A Quote by Herschel Walker

I don't read a lot of the sports, because I think people sometimes either build it up, or you have this guy that hates sports that is going to write bad about it, so I figure I'm not going to read it. Because I'm not going to let him put an idea into my head.
It is important to stop being critical and judging ideas as good or bad because I think if somebody doesn't have a lot of experience you worry their idea is going to be bad, it's not going to be good enough, if not going to be active enough and so you can start to think critically about people's suggestions or what they bring to it but once you get out of that and think whatever they come up with is the right thing right now and so I'm just going to build on it just makes everything so much easier and better.
If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.
I don't care about people kissing my ass or telling me how great I am. I don't really give a damn. I read the bad stuff a whole lot more than I read the good stuff. I read that because there are always going to be critics who are going to say how good you aren't.
A lot of reporters don't have conversations - they just fire off questions. I'm going to listen to what you're saying. If you start giving me a pat answer, I'm going to challenge you. That's where my sports background helps, because athletes do it all the time. So you have to stop them... and sometimes they're going to yell back at you. So what?
It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, "Read," but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, "Don't read, don't think, just write," and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think, "There must be something else people do," you won't be able to quit.
You always hear that tragedies put sports in perspective, that they prove we shouldn't care this much about the successes and failures of a bunch of wealthy strangers. I'm going the other way - sometimes, sports put everything else in perspective.
Because I'd grown up with this singular focus on sports, I just kind of did that with acting. That became an obsession. How am I going to make it? How am I going to figure that out?
I think most of my lessons come from sports. That's why I always emphasise to young kids to get involved in sports because it's where you learn about discipline. It's where you learn to keep going, where if you think you can't make it, you can.
I think you have to read a lot. I think if you're going to write about something you better have read at least 100 books on that topic.
I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'
Every year I tell myself that I’m not going to read any reviews and then I do. We’re all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it’s part of the game, you’re going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that’s how it goes. I don’t write for the reviews.
Every year I tell myself that I'm not going to read any reviews and then I do. We're all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it's part of the game, you're going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that's how it goes. I don't write for the reviews.
Once I wrapped my head around the idea of going and ignored a lot of people that were saying a lot of bad things about going to the US to play football, it was a great decision for me.
Ronda Rousey is a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, and anything that Ronda Rousey does is going to come with extreme scrutiny because she is such a pivotal figure in not only American sports but in global sports as well.
I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!
I enjoy writing about people falling in love, probably because I think the first time you fall in love is the first time that you have to figure out how you're going to orient your life. What are you going to value? What's going to be most important to you? And I think that's really interesting to write about.
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