“I’m sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer.”
“I’d always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole – I wasn’t expected to be good so I wasn’t. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good . . . And so I became good.”
″Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I’ve seen this as one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment:You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.″
“There are days when the close attention I must give to details chafes my spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a few chapters, while in the world without other girls are laughing and singing and dancing, makes me rebellious; but soon I recover my buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of my heart.”
“When it is time for you to leave this school, leave your job, or even leave this earth, you make sure you have worked hard to make sure it mattered you were even here.”
“When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it “done.”
“No one ever said that you could work hard – harder even than you ever thought possible – and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.”
″‘Al,’ said the bird, ‘are you working too hard? Still struggling and going nowhere? Hmmm? Listen. Have I got a place for you. No worries, no cares- it’s terrific.‘”
″‘Emil, Emil! You know perfectly well I can’t afford to get you another suit.’
And once again he remembers- too late- how she works all day to put food on the table and so he can go to school.”
“If he had been civil I would have tried to bear it. I was willing to work, and ready to work hard too; but to be tormented for nothing but their fancies angered me.”