Connors Quotes & Sayings

Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible. — Jimmy Connors

Playing in front of 25,000 people and millions more on television, and performing and doing what I worked so hard to try to accomplish was, in my opinion, the ultimate. Do I miss it? Of course I do. — Jimmy Connors

Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway. — Judith Viorst

My mom doesn't say anything. I don't say anything. Neither of us knows yet what you should say when rape victims blame themselves: 'It was not your fault.'

It was not your fault, even if you were drunk, even if you were wearing a low-cut minidress, even if you were out walking alone at night, even if you were on a date with the rapist and kind of liked him but didn't want to have sex with him. — Joanna Connors

Every time I went out there I performed the best that I could and it was time to step back and clear my mind. — Jimmy Connors

When I'm speaking, I'm more focused on the words as meaning. When I'm singing, I'm more focused on the words as sound. The emotion is more targeted when I'm speaking, more flowing when I'm singing. — Loren Mazzacane Connors

Developing a Culture of Accountability where people take ownership for achieving key organizational results requires a willingness to make the link between where you are and what you have done with where you want to be and what you are going to do to get there. — Roger Connors

Because I believe in my ... proud citizen of this country should be doing. And that is to try and put in as much as he takes out. I guess it's to the hard knocks of life that I attribute this conclusion. — Stompin' Tom Connors

Jimmy Connors likes the ball to come at him in a straight line, so that he can hit it back in another straight line. When it comes to him in a curve, he uses up half of his energy straightening it up again. — Clive James

From Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day Maybe God isn't omnipotent. Maybe he's just been around so long, he knows everything. — Phil Connors

I'm more of a Cristal Connors than a Nomi Malone. — Brad Goreski

On every album I've put out, I've put diverse Canadian songs on it. They're not provincial album; my albums are national albums. There'll be a song about Saskatchewan and Vancouver and Nova Scotia on there. — Stompin' Tom Connors

The trouble with experience is that by the time you have it you are too old to take advantage of it. — Jimmy Connors

I'm not begging to be remembered or whatever. I did my thing, and if you remember, that's even better. But if you don't, there's so many other things going on. — Jimmy Connors

The minute you think you know everything about tennis is the minute your game starts going down the tubes. — Jimmy Connors

I don't want my kids growing up believing that there is nothing destructive in the world. — Chuck Connors

The day I left baseball, I became smart. When I was in baseball, I played for the love of the game. I'd sign any contract they gave me. But then I stopped playing and began doing interviews with the players at the ball park. I began to see the light. — Chuck Connors

Equality? They ought to play the women's final on opening day. Everybody knows who's going to be in it. — Jimmy Connors

The majority of comic book villains are pure evil, but Curt Connors is an exception. Curt Connors is a good man who initially wants to save the world, but he gets hungry and greedy and reckless, and he pays the price for that. — Rhys Ifans

Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had. — Jimmy Connors

New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up. — Jimmy Connors

I owe baseball all that I have and much of what I hope to have. Baseball made my entrance to the film industry immeasurably easier than I could have made it alone. To the greatest game in the world I shall be eternally in debt. — Chuck Connors

Ultimately, I found my instincts mirrored in a line from Thoreau: 'My needle ... always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more exhausted and richer on that side. — Phillip Connors

Blood might be thicker than water, but love was the most powerful magic of all. — Lucy Connors

If you don't think that your country should come before yourself, you can better serve your country by livin' someplace else. — Stompin' Tom Connors

It was a long hard bumpy road, but this great country kept me inspired with its beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world, — Stompin' Tom Connors

Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it. — Jimmy Connors

You have to remember that I played longer than anybody else on the main tour; I played until I was 40, and then played another six years or so on the seniors tour. — Jimmy Connors

One of the things about living in the shadow of a suicide is that everyone involved is going to have some guilt, is going to wonder, 'What could I have done? What could I have said?' — Philip Connors

I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow. — Jimmy Connors

I like any title with the letters U.S. in front of it. To me, the U.S. Open is the most important tournament in the world. — Jimmy Connors

He [Jimmy Connors] has one weakness. He can never say his opponent played well. That's why it feels good to beat him and that's why other players would rather beat him than any other player. — Bjorn Borg

Who are you?" I whispered, leaning forward and reaching across the table to touch his sternly gorgeous face, almost afraid he'd disappear beneath my fingertips. "The face of an angel, the soul of a poet, and the fists of a fighter. I don't know how to understand you, Mickey."
Mickey caught my hand with his and then turned his head and pressed a soft kiss in my palm. "I'm not the only poet at this table. — Lucy Connors

At a mixer at the Art and Architecture School, I met Ray Connors. He had small, worried eyes and fine, babyish hair, already receding. His back was hurting him; two years ago he had fallen down an elevator shaft. He was graduating from the Architecture School in January. He went off to get me a glass of wine; by the time he came back, I had practically forgotten his existence. — Tama Janowitz

This is Lonesome Ridge, so we'd be the lonesome young," I pointed out. "Sounds like a song."
"Sounds like a heartache," he said, tightening his arms around me and resting his cheek on the top of my heard. "I don't want to be lonesome. I want to be with you. — Lucy Connors

In the modern game, you're a clay court specialist, a grass court specialist
or a hard court specialist ... or you're Roger Federer. — Jimmy Connors

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside. — Jimmy Connors

I was never part of the crowd. — Jimmy Connors

Bjorn was a different breed, I threw my best material at him, but he would never smile, but that added to the charm when he played me and Mac. We were going nuts and losing our mind and he was sitting back like he was on a Sunday stroll. — Jimmy Connors

I hate to lose more than I like to win. I hate to see the happiness on their faces when they beat me! — Jimmy Connors

I feel the same way. It doesn't make sense, and I can't understand it, but maybe emotions aren't supposed to make sense," I finally said.
One the other line, Mickey blew out a deep breath.
"Tomorrow, then."
"Tomorrow," I agreed.
Just when I thought he'd hung up, I heard his voice again. "Victoria? Take care of yourself, until I'm with you to do it. — Lucy Connors

Jimmy Connors plays two tennis matches and winds up with $850,000, and Muhammad Ali fights for one bout and winds up with five million bucks. Me, I play 190 games
if you count exhibitions
and I'm overpaid! — Johnny Bench

When I was 7 years old I saw Jimmy Connors make someone carry his bag, as though he were Julius Caesar. I vowed then and there that I would always carry my own. — Andre Agassi

I was raised by two women, and that laid the groundwork for the way I treat 'em: with the utmost respect and admiration. — Jimmy Connors

I think my greatest victory was every time I walked out there, I gave it everything I had. I left everything out there. That's what I'm most proud of. I can't go win Wimbledon anymore, so if what I've done in the past is not good enough, let it go. Because I'm certainly not sitting around thinking about it. — Jimmy Connors

The way I look at the top five, (Rod) Laver, (Roger) Federer, myself, Borg and (Ivan) Lendl. I think those five guys dominated their generations better than anyone. Maybe Roger will dominate better than any one of the other four. Maybe I put Andre (Agassi) as kind of six through 10 with, you know, (John) McEnroe and (Jimmy) Connors, kind of those guys. That's kind of how I see it. — Pete Sampras

I had true rivalries. Not only did I want to beat my opponent, but I didn't want to let him up, either. I had a rivalry with Mac, Lendl, Borg. Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: 'This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry.' There were no hugs and kisses. — Jimmy Connors

I'd rather have drugs and liquor and divine visions than this empty barren fatalism on a mountaintop," he wrote toward the end of his stint. These words are especially poignant when you consider that two years earlier he'd written to Allen Ginsberg: "I have crossed the ocean of suffering and found the path at last." For Kerouac, the path of Buddhism proved too difficult, too alien to his temperament, and he eventually retreated into the mystical French Catholicism he'd known as a boy. Its fascination with the martyrdom of the Crucifixion jibed with his sense of himself as a doomed prophet destined for self-annihilation. The essential Buddhist ethic - do no violence to any living being - was a principle that tragically eluded him in his treatment of himself. — Philip Connors

No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life. — Jimmy Connors

Sometimes he'd write my mother's new name under his on a scrap of paper ... then, the one that hurt her teeth to see, Mrs. Brock Connors-as if, by marrying, my father would be himself, and also become her. — Laura Kasischke

If you're ever being typecasted - as most of us are - that's a great way to be typecasted. So, 'The Rifleman' is still popular with a lot of people, and I'm proud to be associated. — Chuck Connors

I was a very bad musician. I was the world's worst guitar player, so when I was performing solo with a guitar, I had to keep things very simple. — Loren Mazzacane Connors

Believe me, Alex. I am trying. My fucking bed is too big for me. It feels empty now. I can't believe I'm even saying that, but whatever. That's how I feel. I want you back. I want you to move in. I want you with me again. — Tijan

Use it or lose it. — Jimmy Connors

Nothing is like being out there and playing and performing and winning - nothing. But to have an interest in the player? The nerves and everything that goes with it? Seeing what he's learned and how he's done it? That's the second best thing to playing. I think. — Jimmy Connors

Big money encourages tanking. In my opinion, tanking is going on even with a lot of the top guys today - it's quite evident. — Jimmy Connors

There was never anything I wanted to do more than play tennis. Never once walked out there and thought, 'I wish I was doing something else.' Not once. — Jimmy Connors

The Oakland chapter's "bondsman" is a handsome middle-aged woman with platinum-blond hair named Dorothy Connors. She has a pine-paneled office, drives a white Cadillac and treats the Angels gently, like wayward children. "These boys are the backbone of the bail-bond business," she says. "Ordinary customers come and go, but just like clockwork, the Angels come down to my office each week to make their payments. They really pay the overhead. — Hunter S. Thompson

For the last five or six years the most important thing in my life has been my family. — Jimmy Connors

Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?' — Jimmy Connors

There is only one number one. It is a lonely spot but it has got the best view of all. — Jimmy Connors

I like spoken-word as much as the singing word. — Loren Mazzacane Connors

I wasn't a bad basketball player, but I was far from the world's greatest. Good defense, no offense - that was me. — Chuck Connors

I can never get rid of 'The Rifleman,' and I don't want to. It's a good image. — Chuck Connors

It's the same things your whole life. 'Clean up your room!', 'Stand up straight!', 'Pick up your feet!', 'Take it like a man!', 'Be nice to your sister!', 'Don't mix beer and wine, ever!'. Oh yeah, 'Don't drive on the railroad track!' — Philip Connors

I've always liked edges, places where one thing becomes another ... ... transition zones, boundaries and borderlands. I like the mixing that happens, the juxtapositions, the collisions and connections. I like the way they help me see the world from a fresh angle. — Philip Connors

Behind the shadows there lies defeat; Fancy the light where her smile greets. — Jackie Connors

Cat Steven's song Wild World: Oh Baby, baby, it's a wild world, it's hard to get by just on a smile, Oh baby, baby, it's a wild world and I'll always remember you like a child. — Jennifer Connors

I'm getting tired of saying hello to Stan Smith and not getting any reply. I'm cocky and confident and maybe I'm too bullheaded sometimes, but I think I have some fan and player support. I know what the others say, but I'm not that obnoxious. I am not a punk. I'm 5' 10, 155 pounds. I've got broad shoulders and I can pack a punch. Most of these guys are windbags anyway. If they ever try anything with me, I'll be to the net fast. — Jimmy Connors

These ancient laws also reflected a widespread suspicion that women accusing men of rape were lying--a belief system that is still operative today. Almost every time a star athlete or celebrity is accused of rape, for example, there's an inference that the charge is false, brought by a scorned, or vindictive, or drunk, or willing woman against an innocent man. — Joanna Connors

With everything else that would swirl around me when I got involved in it, tennis was my main concern. — Jimmy Connors

I don't go out there to love my enemy. I go out there to squash him. — Jimmy Connors

As you know, I was one of the original grunters. But Jimmy Connors used to grunt way before I was born. I never knew I was grunting, it was just part of my strokes. — Monica Seles

Nothing's perfect along the way [in life], and you ride the ups and downs. It's how you come out of those and continue on that I guess really matters. — Jimmy Connors

I hate to lose more than I love to win. — Jimmy Connors

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today. — Philip Connors

From where we lived, to practise in St Louis was an hour-and-a-half drive each way, so that took a lot of the time. So really, our lives just took different paths. — Jimmy Connors

I would watch Gonzalez play and he mesmerized you. It would be like looking into the flame of a fire. You know you couldn't take your eyes off him because you never knew what he would do next. — Jimmy Connors

When you're doing all you can and "what more?" seems an impossible task, try thinking differently, step outside your box, and open your mind to solutions that were there all the time. Solutions you just couldn't see. Act — Roger Connors

It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet. — Jimmy Connors

Our elected leaders treat us as children or consumers - ideally both, monstrous in our appetites, unable to discriminate between our wants and our needs. — Philip Connors

Viewed from a different angle, my uncle's words offered up the rest of my life as an unexpected gift, an opportunity for the most radical improvisation. I could be whatever I wanted to be, as long as I didn't end up another corpse in the casket with a hole in his head. Anything went. Anything was permissible, as long as I lived. — Philip Connors

He [Aldo Leopold] recognized that industrial-age tools were incompatible with truly wild country - that roads eventually brought with them streams of tourists and settlers, hotels and gas stations, summer homes and cabins, and a diminishment of land health. He sort of invented the concept of wilderness as we now understand it in America: a stretch of country without roads, where all human movement must happen on foot or horseback. He understood that to keep a little remnant of our continent wild, we had no choice but to exercise restraint. I think it's one of the best ideas our culture ever had, not to mention our best hope for preserving the full diversity of nonhuman life in a few functioning ecosystems. — Philip Connors

When you ask people about guys they didn't like because they were aggressive, there's me, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors; not too many names would come up. — Pete Rose

Manners are manners. Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase have no respect. I don't want my kid seeing Nastase play. The demeanor you show on the court is important to tennis ... Maybe we (yesterday's stars) were too stereotyped. But we were told to behave or they'd take our racket away. — Rod Laver

People say I'm around because I have a lot of heart, but I know all the heart in the world couldn't have helped me if I wasn't physically fit. — Jimmy Connors

By some miracle the cairn remained untouched by the flames, solid as the day I'd built it, a tiny oasis amid the burn scar. I removed the cap rock. I placed the bone inside. I felt the enormity of his loss once more. The pain of it never does fade entirely, never will - no doubt it disfigured me in ways that will endure for what remains of my life - but at last I found a place to put it where it wouldn't eat me alive. My devotion to his memory led me there, the place I venerate above all others on earth, my little voodoo shrine to the lost and the damned, as wild and remote as the country of grief itself. — Philip Connors

I depended on chiropractic care when I was an athlete. I depend on it now as a busy film and TV actor. — Chuck Connors

When you're hot, anything can happen. — Jimmy Connors

Tennis would be much more exciting if they had pitching machines firing Tennis was given to me to keep me off the street corners of east St. Louis. — Jimmy Connors

My retirement, back in 1976, began as a one-year boycott to challenge the media on that question. I refused to return until the media, and radio stations in particular, got a hold on identifiably Canadian songs. — Stompin' Tom Connors

I am not looking to be understood or liked. Like me or not, I don't care. I am an outsider, that is the way I was brought up. — Jimmy Connors

That's something a lot of athletes miss - a lot of them walk away too soon. They don't get everything out of their system. They have a lot of what-ifs when they're sitting around later in life. I don't have that. I got all that out of my system. I pushed it to the brink, I loved it, and when I walked away, I'd had enough. — Jimmy Connors

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story? — Jimmy Connors

I can tell you that the only ting in the world that makes sense to me right now is you and me. — Lucy Connors

I can't say that I was my happiest on court, but I felt completely free. Free from family obligations, free from my own torment. In a real sense I was a different person. It was a place where I could not tolerate the idea of being beaten. I psyched myself up into a state where I felt something close to hatred towards my opponent, a state where I detested the idea of someone making his name at the expense of Jimmy Connors. I was in my element on court, measuring myself against someone else. I was not competitive for show. It came from deep within. — Jimmy Connors

The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble
to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills. I produce nothing but words; I consumer nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being utterly useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself. — Philip Connors

I never lost a tennis match, I just ran out of time — Jimmy Connors

The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command. — Phillip Connors

I've been here playing against Connors and it can be very, very loud. It makes it exciting at the same time. — Stefan Edberg