Top 106 Snooker Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

I've just got the mindset of really wanting to open the game up to new people. I kind of want to create a massive attention around snooker.

I started out as a teenager I was a snooker player, or pool player. Through that I met some other teenagers that were gamblers, if you will, who started basement games. I was just sort of learning on the go, losing my $10.

Because I could do things on the snooker table that no other player could do, I just had this sort of self-destruct button in me.

Snooker's never going to be that. It's never going to be a worldwide game like tennis and golf. It's never going to happen.

I don't think I suffered with depression, I don't think I'm a depressed type of person - I just think I suffered a depression to do with snooker, and I just couldn't handle it. I could go out and play, but take me out of there and I couldn't do life. It was a nightmare, my life just felt like a bit of a nightmare.

It is like any sport. You practise thousands of times and you miss the simplest ball and you don't understand why. But that's why snooker is so special, because all of sudden you can lose everything.

My favourite pub game is, of course, snooker. Any game whose rules basically amount to finding a table covered in mess and slowly and methodically putting it all away out of sight is one with which I can empathise emphatically.

That's the hardest part of the game. You've got to stay focused. With golf, make a mistake and you get another shot straight away; but with snooker you could be five minutes before you get another chance.

Ronnie is the greatest player to have ever picked up a snooker cue. People have said that about me. But although I won 50 or so tournaments I never picked up the world championship. That was a little bit of a disappointment.

In 1983, I played in a new tournament called the Professional Snooker League. I won eight of my 11 matches, beating Alex Higgins, Jimmy White and Dennis Taylor, among others.

40 seems to be the new 25 in snooker so there is no rush, but I would like to start hitting the time where I'm more stable and regularly hitting the quarters and semis, push on and make some money.

Snooker still fascinates me and I still get a buzz from it.

It's the worst feeling in the world - to lose in the first round at Sheffield and then have to go home - because it's such a long tournament, and it's hard to avoid it. It's on the TV all day every day, and if I lost, I didn't want to be anywhere near snooker.

In America everyone plays bang ball, eight ball, nine ball, that kind of stupid crap, but in Canada and Europe they play snooker which is a much more skillful game and I enjoy that. I play pool now with friends, if we go to a bar we will play, but I am nowhere near as good as I once was.

In snooker, it's very important to keep very still on the shot and allow the cue to do the work.

It wasn't the best move to move here as far as snooker's concerned. But everything else, living in Norway is beautiful, my wife, my son, you can't change those things, it's one against 10 positive things.

I got into poker in the early 2000s. In snooker tournaments, you are always looking for things to pass the time between matches, so we'd play together, or I would play online.

I've tried to play within myself but I need adrenaline and need to be pumped up to play well otherwise you will see snoring snooker like that.

I met my wife in Latvia 17 or 18 years ago, moved over to Norway in 2003 or 2004 and after a couple of years living there, I was able to represent Norway as a snooker player.

I got into pool tournaments when I was five, playing every weekend in competitions. Then one day I started playing snooker. I learnt by practising on my own, repeating the same shots again and again, and watching other players and copying what they did.

At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.

Maybe one day there will be a snooker pin-up calendar if we all get in shape. I would be up for that, get some spray tan going.

On one podcast, I attempt to antagonise and lose listeners by commentating on myself playing snooker against myself in my basement. Most people are baffled, confused, even angry about it.

People often write to me, addressing the envelope, 'Stephen Hendry, Snooker Player' or 'Stephen Hendry, Scotland,' and it reaches me.

My dad's method in his madness was to try every sport and then observe what I liked. I played football, tennis, golf, cricket but I loved my snooker.

That period in the late Eighties and early Nineties was when I was playing my best snooker. My trouble was that I had so many bad habits that my preparation was terrible: people like Steve Davis or Dennis Taylor were model pros.

You cannot underestimate the body blow for a snooker player of having your cue broken. After all, it's an extension to your arm.

Snooker players go into steady decline and lose their intensity after a while. But I will have real purpose the next five years. I want to prove people wrong and win a lot more tournaments.

Fred Davis, the doyen of snooker, now 67 years of age and too old to get his leg over, prefers to use his left hand.

When I started, there was never a great history of people doing well in snooker from Scotland. By chance, I got a table for my Christmas. If I hadn't got that, then none of this would have happened.

The worst time was in 1985 when house prices crashed and interest rates went up to 14 percent. I was not winning on the snooker table and I had this big image to keep up - and a lifestyle where I lived beyond my means.

Ronnie O'Sullivan, the greatest snooker player ever, will tell you that he doesn't practise. I'm not having that. I call him Roger, after Federer, because he's a genius. He doesn't like that nickname.

A long break can cause long-term damage to a player's technique. It can be dangerous for a snooker player to go 2-3 months without even touching a cue.

People have been to jail when they're innocent. I knew I would never miss a single ball on a snooker table on purpose and, until then, I was sure the evidence would support me.

It was fantastic when I came into snooker, when tobacco was throwing lots of money at it, and even when they fell away we thought others would come in because of all the TV exposure. But it didn't happen.

It might sound strange now from where I'm standing as a world boxing champion, but I harboured serious thoughts, at the age of nine, of putting my whole life into snooker. I remember being fascinated by the game, watching the likes of Steve Davis, and thought I would do it.

I could be in Spain, spending my time playing bad golf; financially I don't need to play snooker. I play because I love it.

There are a few great orchestras in the world, thank goodness. Although some people do put them in ranking order, it's not like a snooker match. Each orchestra has different things to offer.

The way I play will change things, there will be a lot more attacking snooker in the future.

Obviously, like Wembley is synonymous with tennis, snooker is synonymous with Sheffield.

In all the years I've been playing, I've never considered changing my cue. It was the first cue I ever bought, aged 13, picked from a cabinet in a Dunfermline snooker centre just because I liked the Rex Williams signature on it. I saved £40 to buy it. It's a cheap bit of wood, and it's been the butt of other players' jokes for ages.

I love Belfast, because of the way that people here love their snooker. And I won my first professional tournament here in 1981. It was at the King's Hall and I beat Doug Mountjoy in the final. That victory will always be pretty special for me.

In both snooker and poker, you have to play your best under pressure; I was always able to do that. I don't think it is something you can teach. Your mental strength, your confidence, your self-belief has got to be very strong. That is the common denominator.

Snooker's only popular in China now. Well China's OK to go to once or twice a year but to go and play six or seven tournaments there is too much.

Snooker has been really, really tough for me from a personal point of view because to be at the top and to stay at the top you've got to put the hours in.

I've been semi-successful. I've done all right but I'm not the player I was. Who do I think will win the world championship? John Higgins. Have I been good for snooker? I don't know.