- I made it my goal. Nothing would get in the way of that.
- Football taught me that I hated to lose. Lakeland [Florida] taught me that I needed to win.
- The game was a way to prove myself. That's all. A way to test myself.
- There is only one way to win, one way to play. All out, all the time.
- Wasn't just about the beauty of hard work, and pain, and chasing demons. It was about setting my father aside, burying his name--and freeing me to live my life my own way, here on in. On my own terms.
- I didn't have to be the biggest, or the fastest, or the strongest--all I needed was to put in the best effort.
- All the way to the NFL, last snap in the Super Bowl, I played like there was some little kid out there, eyeballing me through the rusted metal of a chain-link fence, modeling his game after mine.
- Every chance I ever got on a real football field, it didn't come about because I'd earned it outright. It didn't come about because I was picked first to fill this or that spot. No, it came about because of an injury [to a teammate] and because I was good and ready when the guy ahead of me went down.
- He had a body like Tarzan, but he took a hit like Jane.
- It was the difference between hearing and listening.
- Our motto was simple: big-time players make big-time plays in big-time games. Out of that came another motto: this is how we feed our kids.
- "By the time I'm through, I'll be the greatest player to ever play for the Miami Hurricanes."
- I didn't need Chuck Amato or Bobby Bowden or anyone else on that Florida State coaching staff to know they made a mistake, letting me slip away from their program. I already knew this myself, and that's all that counted.
- Sophomore year, I came into camp ripped, pissed, hungry.
- I put the blame someplace else, told myself those last two losses weren't on me. But that's not how you win as a team, is it?
- There are parts of the game you can't control. So my thing was to control what I could, and to influence everything else.
- That front-seven box we featured on that 1994 team--man, I've been a part of a lot of great defenses, but I will take that Hurricane line against anybody.
- When the good things are about to happen, the bad things can't be too far off.
- It was a motivating thing, an inspiring thing, to walk into Three Rivers Stadium and feel all that history. It was in the air, all around. We were inside the Steel Curtain, and that building just reeked of defense.
- Some of the things these police officers did to me, these corrections officers did to me, I won't ever speak of them again. Not from my lips. I will not reduce myself to revisit this ugliness. I'll just say it was demonic, the way I was treated. It was pure evil.
- My smile represents my past. My heart represents my future.
- You tell yourself the pain don't matter--and, just like that, it don't. And once you buy into that, there's no going back.
- If you show me your failures, I'll show you your future.
- Whatever it is, stand for something.
- I suffered the prejudice of judgment. Freddie Gray suffered the prejudice of prejudgment. Might not seem like a big shift--but to me, it's everything.
- If you've been done wrong, do right. If you've been done bad, do good. Be your own man. Live in your own skin. Serve your own God. Know your own mind.
- Real people don't follow--they lead. Real people don't need to be liked--they earn our respect.
- Everyone with a great name has been through something. A great deal of something.
If you enjoyed the quotes, considered giving the book a read.
