Deford Quotes & Sayings

I think at its best, sport does bring us together. — Frank Deford

I wanted to possess all the books I had already read, as well as all those I had not - every book in the whole wide world, in other words. — Andy Miller

I think the absolute worst job I ever had - not because it was a terrible job, just because I was just so bad at it - was when I worked at a scenic factory in Chicago. — Timothy Simons

So much of life, so much of work, is luck. — Frank Deford

Give yourself permission to adore life... — Deborah H. Deford

Usually when an athlete gets a reputation it sticks with him, even when he's an old man. — Frank Deford

I don't think there are many kids who sit around and want to be actors. I don't think there are many kids who want to sit around and want to be senators. But so many of us want to be athletes, so we're envious of them and we put them up on that pedestal. — Frank Deford

The joy sometimes is in the simple beauty. — Frank Deford

You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches. — Frank Deford

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do. — Frank Deford

I grew up in Baltimore and that's why I root for the Orioles. I'm very suspicious of people who move and take on a new team. You should stick with the team of your youth all the way to your grave. That shows a sense of loyalty and devotion. — Frank Deford

Among musical instruments, only the first - the human voice - is more universal than the harmonica. This is appropriate, given that the mouth organ is the most ventriloquial of musical devices. "I throw my voice," explains Lonnie Glosson, the seller of millions of "talking harmonicas." DeFord Bailey, harmonica star of the early Grand Ole Opry broadcasts, approached his first mouth organ as an impressionist would: "Oh, I would wear it out, trying to imitate everything I heard! Hens, foxes, hounds, turkeys . . . everything around me. — Kim Field

If the players aren't getting paid, there's something terribly, terribly wrong, and that's true only in the United States. Everywhere else, where money is involved with sport, the players get paid. But these poor kids in college, they're doing it for free, and that's just disgraceful. — Frank Deford

It's in your hands whether he lives or dies, or stays as he is with one foot in each place," the old woman had said.
Doubt and homesickness opened a cavern inside her. She remembered how it felt to be filled with pain too great for her tortured mind and body, hoping someone would find her, forgive her, heal her. But now she feared Alasdair Og's darkness would consume her, and she would be as lost as he.
This time forever. — Lecia Cornwall

In Hollywood, writers are considered only the first draft of human beings. — Frank Deford

Knowledge in any society should be the power of transformation. — Henry Johnson Jr

I don't understand blogs. People used to write to make money, no? You didn't give it away. I have nothing against blogs. I don't have a problem with them. But it's like, 'What are you doing? Why aren't you working? — Frank Deford

Better the butcher than the meat. — George R R Martin

I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it." — Frank Deford

Here we are, arguably the most intelligent being that's ever walked planet Earth, with this extraordinary brain ... and yet we're destroying the only home we have. — Jane Goodall

The idle mind knows not what it wants. — Quintus Ennius

The National Football League needs "a guardian, not a CEO" to deal with the fact that "the sport is simply more and more identified with violence, both in its inherent nature and in its savage personnel. — Frank Deford

I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed. — Frank Deford

Hockey is the only place where a guy can go nowadays and watch two white guys fight. — Frank Deford

I think there are white alumni out there who wouldn't mind having an African American president of their school, but would be reluctant to have an African American coach, because he represents the school so. I think it's just sheer backward racism. — Frank Deford

If you're a white kid growing up and you see a Black player and he's got the name of your college or your town across his chest, that means something. — Frank Deford

Patience is real self-mastery. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Percy pizza with extra olives. — Rick Riordan

I think one of the most immoral things is college football and basketball, where everybody is making money except the players. — Frank Deford

To see the glory in sport, where somebody comes from behind and does something, sinks a shot in the last second or throws a touchdown pass or hits a home run, there is a beauty in that, and at the end of the day, that's why we love sports more than anything else. — Frank Deford

I criticize the NFL in many ways, but I think it's made great strides. I think college basketball, great strides. College football means so much to alumni, doesn't it? It sort of represents the school. It's when you go back; it's at the beginning of the school year. — Frank Deford

Sometimes words come out of me and I don't know where they come from or why. They're like falling stars tumbling through the universe; bright, burning things that can't be stopped. — Glenda Millard

An enlarged global public society, with its many dissenting and corrective voices, can quickly call the bluff of lavishly credentialled and smug intellectual elites. — Pankaj Mishra

She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. — Frank Deford

If you LIKE your email provider, you can KEEP your email provider. Period. — Hillary Clinton

Blondes are like left-handed athletes, they all get a second look even if they don't deserve one. — Frank Deford

If you can't measure it, you can't change it. — Peter Drucker

... of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines ... Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred ... As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is ... a faith that ... has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. — David Bentley Hart

I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism. — Frank Deford