I love basketball, but playing basketball doesn't fully define who I am. I was always a good student, too.

Fundamental preparation is always effective. Work on those parts of your game that are fundamentally weak.

I have always thought that writers come with any variety of attributes. Some are capable and some aren't.

Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.

What I have is P.H. positive chronic myeloid leukemia, which is an aberration in your white blood cells.

I think a lot of people, if they get the opportunity to do some acting, they think, 'I might be a star.'

We want to show how hip-hop, which kind of fuels today's basketball stars, is directly related to jazz.

With 300 million people in America, you can fail to impress 299 million of them and still go platinum.

What we need are positive, realistic goals and the willingness to work. Hard work and practical goals.

I've had enough success for two lifetimes, My success is talent put together with hard work and luck.

I always thought I could do a good job coaching, but the opportunities have not presented themselves.

When a rap song glorifies violence, death and sadness and loss is inflicted because of the violence.

It's hard for young players to see the big picture. They just see three or four years down the road.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the 761st was Patton's best tank unit and nobody knew about it.

If not for the success that medicine has made, I might be part of a much different story right now.

I tell kids to pursue their basketball dreams, but I tell them to not let that be their only dream.

I needed to go to class; I needed to go to practice; I needed to have a life away from basketball.

As a parent, I have a job as a role model to my children, and by extension, to other young people.

This is what I would have done if I had to have a real job: I would have been a history teacher.

When we went up against teams that were better, I just hoped that we could steal the victories.

When the line started to blur between the fans and the players, sometimes things can get ugly.

Kobe's an incredibly talented athlete, and there are many more like him among today's players.

I am highly offended by the total lack of acknowledgement of my contribution to Laker success.

I'm not going to emphasize the sky-hook as much as work with the specific skills of the guys.

Some stuff can be fixed, some stuff can’t be. Deciding which is which is part of maturing.

I was getting hot flashes and sweats on a regular basis. That's not normal, even for my age.

I can do something else besides stuff a ball through a hoop. My biggest resource is my mind.

A team will always appreciate a great individual if he's willing to sacrifice for the group.

The constant expansion has diluted the talent. Other than that, it's still the same game.

I need about three seats lengthwise to sleep on a plane. It's not easy for me to curl up.

[Coaching] is a difficult job which everyone who owns a TV thinks they can do better at.

I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.

You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.

You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.

She always wanted to believe in things.

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.

The evening's the best part of the day. You've done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.

The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.

Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory...