I was told by my father, who was a priest, that it was the basic duty of a Muslim to establish peace on earth... I soon came to the conclusion that it was not religion but misuse of religion and politicising of religion, which was the main culprit.
A lot of my family is from Texas, stuff like that, so I was always in Texas, and when you grow up in Texas, around Texas, you want to go to the biggest Texas school, and UT was that.
In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.
I'd heard about Texas football and how much of a religion it is, but to go to Odessa and experience it first-hand is something different than just hearing about it.
As a Catholic, I find mindfulness helps me participate in my religion more wholeheartedly. If you are praying the rosary, participating in the rituals at Mass, or listening to the priest preach, you will actually be paying attention! Whatever your religion is, it can enhance the experience of participating in that religion.
In England, football is a religion. In France, football is not a religion. It's wine and food.
In Texas, it's football. In Georgia, football. There's an appreciation from the average person about football more than anywhere else. And we have that for basketball in New York. And we'll always have that in New York.
I don't think people can watch University of Texas basketball or football games with me - really, anything Texas is playing - without wanting to punch me in the face. I'm as big a Longhorn fan as you'll find.
Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.
Texas history is a varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive.
Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, are the two toughest communities in which you have to put together a winning football team. They are both big metropolitan areas without professional football and major league baseball to sidetrack them.
To give you an idea about how old I'm getting, we had some family living in Texas for a while, and we went to the Texas museum at the University of Texas in Austin, and they had this whole Texas Instruments section, and my Speak & Spell was an exhibit in the museum.
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
Fort Worth is friendly; it's still a Texas town. It's the most Texas city in Texas.
Coaching at Texas and playing at the University of Oklahoma, I had the opportunity to see a lot of guys in Texas - Texas lettermen - who I played against.