H. G. Bissinger Quotes & Sayings

Well I just always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. — H. G. Bissinger

Why did I become a writer? Because I grew up in New York City, and there were seven newspapers in New York City, and my family was an inveterate reader of newspapers and I loved holding a paper in my hand. It was something sacred. — H. G. Bissinger

The solution to the problem of poor performance scores had been a new system of grading that would encourage students to stay in school as well as improve their self-esteem. Beyond these important, admirable goals, it also had a more immediate purpose: it would undoubtedly reduce the school's notoriously high failure rate, which had become an embarrassment to the school and to the school board. Under the plan, equal weight was given to class participation (which to some teachers meant simply showing up, because how on earth were you supposed to quantify participation?), homework, weekly tests, and a final exam at the end of every six-week period. A student could flunk every weekly test as well as the final exam and still pass a course for that period. — H. G. Bissinger

Nothing could be sillier than we got good people here. We got the same cross-section of assholes as anywhere. — H. G. Bissinger

I think the only safe medium are books, because people like to hold books in their hand. — H. G. Bissinger

I think the older you are, the more you're going to cling to the printed word as being sacred. — H. G. Bissinger

If someone is going to criticize what you've written and you believe in what you've written then you should respond. — H. G. Bissinger

Teams are made up of a lot of components. They're made up of hunger, they're made up of desire, they're made up of chemistry, and they're made up of emotion. — H. G. Bissinger

saw religion in Odessa used not to reinforce religious beliefs at all but as an excuse for people to come together and be made comfortable with their own social beliefs in racial and gender bigotry. — H. G. Bissinger

There are so few other things we can look at with pride,' said Allen. 'We don't have a large university that has thirty or forty thousand students in it. We don't have the art museum that some communities have and are world-renowned. When somebody talks about West Texas, they talk about football. There is nothing to replace it. It's an integral part of what made the community strong. You take it away and it's almost like you strip the identity of the people. — H. G. Bissinger

Permian had established itself as perhaps the most successful football dynasty in the country - pro, college, or high school. Few brands of sport were more competitive than Class AAAAA Texas high school football, the division for the biggest schools in the state. — H. G. Bissinger

He saw the irresistible allure of high school sports, but he also saw an inevitable danger in adults' living vicariously through their young. And he knew of no candle that burned out more quickly than that of the high school athlete. — H. G. Bissinger

I am the father of twin sons that were born in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1983. They were 13 weeks premature. Gerry weighed 1 pound 14 ounces, and Zachary 1 pound 11 ounces. They were the first male twins to ever survive at Pennsylvania Hospital. — H. G. Bissinger

I am 5'6' and desperately wish I was taller. — H. G. Bissinger

One of the inspirations for my becoming a writer was the baseball board game Strat-O-Matic. — H. G. Bissinger

I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that. — H. G. Bissinger

I'm really not interested in other people's opinions, because I think frankly most of those opinions are either misinformed and adding to this endless ball of hot air we have in our society where everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and sacred and what counts. — H. G. Bissinger

This must not be planet earth," Cone told his partner. "This must be hell." But it wasn't. It was just Odessa. — H. G. Bissinger

Those Panthers ... those itsy, bitsy football players ... those hearty, gutsy guys from the oilfields ... what about 'em? Yep, its incredible, amazin' and unbelievable, but the li'lfellers do occasionally catch the best end of the stick. All the reasons for the phenomenal support of Permian had been embodied by this 1980 varsity team. They were a classic bunch of overachievers who had become living proof of all the perceived values of white working-class and middle-class America-desire, self-sacrifice, pushing oneself beyond the expected limit. They were the kinds of values that the Permian fans harbored about themselves. What made those boys great on the football field had made the fans great as well. Just as the boys had produced against all odds, so they had produced in the oil field against all odds, not with brains and fancy talk but with brawn and muscle and endurance and self-sacrifice. — H. G. Bissinger

If you leave your wife and you don't ever contact her again, that says something about how you felt about the marriage. — H. G. Bissinger

Committing unnecessary surgeries is very, very rare. And it's very wrong. — H. G. Bissinger

Think about your jobs. Where do you want to be in five years?" asked Fowler of a female student. "Rich," the student replied. "How are you going to achieve that?" "Marry someone. — H. G. Bissinger

I always had a curiosity about Texas. I had a curiosity about small-town life, although, granted, Odessa's not a tiny town. — H. G. Bissinger

Athletics: it's a wonderful thing, it's a spell-binding thing, nothing in life has quite as much pageantry, as much emotion within a finite time frame, it's incredibly exciting. — H. G. Bissinger

I'm gonna party, see how intoxicated I can get and how many rules I can flaunt. That's my motto. — H. G. Bissinger

There are the medical dangers of football in general caused by head trauma over repetitive hits. — H. G. Bissinger

In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics. — H. G. Bissinger

My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co. — H. G. Bissinger

She said also that they absolutely hated any assignment in which they had to interpret what they had read. If they had to think about anything, make critical judgments and deliberations, the cause was hopeless. The best they could be expected to do was regurgitate. — H. G. Bissinger

But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it. — H. G. Bissinger

One of the exciting things about reporting is going to places you've never been to before. — H. G. Bissinger

He realized that he agonized over everything all the time, and he admitted that part of the problem in the Carter game had been his own lack of belief in his abilities. He knew the reason why he was like this, that it was the price he paid for carefully watching out for himself ever since he had been a little boy. 'I've never taken a chance in life,' he said. 'I need to run in front of traffic bucknacked and get arrested. — H. G. Bissinger

It was stupid not to let MacArthur finish off those rice eaters. Push 'em back. — H. G. Bissinger

I worked at my high school newspaper at Andover, which came out weekly, unusual for a high school paper. Then my first day at Penn I went right to the 'Daily Pennsylvanian' and pretty much spent most of my college career working both as the sports editor and then editor of the editorial page. — H. G. Bissinger

Actually, my dog I think is the only person who consistently loves me all the time. — H. G. Bissinger

I don't have many friends in Philadelphia. I sort of have one. I have the dog and someone else. — H. G. Bissinger

Odessa is the setting for this book, but it could be anyplace in this vast land where, on a Friday night, a set of spindly stadium lights rises to the heavens to so powerfully, and so briefly, ignite the darkness. — H. G. Bissinger

I work not only for the gathering and assimilation of knowledge, but also to teach the fact that one can be brilliant without being arrogant, that great intellectual capacity brings great responsibility, that the quest for knowledge should never supplant the joy of learning, that one with great capacities must learn to be tolerant and appreciate those with lesser or different absolutes, — H. G. Bissinger

Maybe it's a tired tale, but without an education, you're not going to go anywhere. — H. G. Bissinger

Because Cards' fans are the most knowledgeable and loyal in all of baseball, they booed almost reluctantly, polite as booing goes, what would have passes as a standing ovation in Philly. — H. G. Bissinger

I actually like football a great deal. — H. G. Bissinger

If the season could ever have any salvation, if it could ever make sense again, it would have to come tonight under a flood of stars on the flatiron plains, before thousands of fans who had once anointed him the chosen son but now mostly thought of him as just another nigger. — H. G. Bissinger

Athletics lasts for such a short period of time. It ends for people. But while it lasts, it creates this make-believe world where normal rules don't apply. We build this false atmosphere. When it's over and the harsh reality sets in, that's the real joke we play on people ... Everybody wants to experience that superlative moment, and being an athlete can give you that. It's Camelot for them. But there's even life after it. — H. G. Bissinger