Nick Harris > Nick's Quotes

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water.

I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.

'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?'

'A heart. She should get a heart.'

Little did they know. They are the tattoos.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: 1,098 Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“in the absence of feedback, people will fill in the blanks with a negative. They will assume you don’t care about them or don’t like them.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“very few people are able to organize and direct followers, which is a far more subtle and multifaceted skill. Leadership is really a form of temporary authority that others grant you, and they only follow you if they find you consistently credible. It’s all about perception—and if teammates find you the least bit inconsistent, moody, unpredictable, indecisive, or emotionally unreliable, then they balk and the whole team is destabilized.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“What Michelle didn’t yet know was that there is a vast difference between playing and leading. The point guard position in basketball is one of the great tutorials on leadership, and it ought to be taught in classrooms. Anyone can perfect a dribble with muscle memory;”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“I’d bring our big players out to the perimeter and make them run the play like a guard, so they saw the play from that angle as well as their own. When one of our bigs got upset if a guard didn’t make a play, I’d say, “Fine. You go play point.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“life. It gives you vision. But you can’t acquire it if you’re afraid of keeping score.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“Have Candace bring the ball up,” she said urgently. It was totally counterintuitive: Candace was our go-to player, on whom we counted when we needed a score. If Candace brought the ball up the court, that meant she’d have to pass it off. It meant someone else would take the last shot of the game. It meant that if we lost, everyone in the country would want to know why we hadn’t gone to the best player in the game. I nodded. It was a high-stakes decision. But I loved being the trigger puller. Loved it. I went into the huddle—and made the last critical call I would ever make in an NCAA Final Four. I looked at Lex, who would be our inbounder. “Get the ball in to Candace,” I said. I turned to Candace. “They will converge on you. Find the open player.” They all nodded and took their places. What happened next is a credit to the culture of a program in which players are taught to commit, to play all out, to attend to every detail no matter how seemingly unimportant, to never go through the motions, no matter how routine seeming, to finish with as much energy as they started with.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“I want to ask you a tough question. Okay. If you could trade your championships for your health back, would you? Uhhhh. That’s not even realistic. I know. But I’d like to hear how you feel. [Pause] I would give back every one of my trophies to still be coaching. That says it’s the teaching you really love, more than the winning. That’s right. It also says that retirement is a deep wound.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“I didn’t leave her there for long. When a player makes a mistake, you always want to put them back in quickly—you don’t just berate them and sit them down with no chance for redemption.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“I'm interested to see where a combination of faith and science will take me.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: 1,098 Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“But the truly ambitious teams find relief in honesty when they’ve lost, because it’s the diagnostic tool that leads to a solution—here’s what we did wrong and let’s fix it, so we don’t ever have to feel this way again. Great teams explain their failure; they don’t excuse it. Then they pay a visit to Charles Atlas and get stronger. When you explain a loss aloud, it’s no longer a tormenting mystery. I believed in that brand of honesty my whole career, and I knew at least one other coach who believed in it too.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“There is an old saying: a champion is someone who is willing to be uncomfortable.”
― Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective

“Don't mistake activity with achievement.”
― John Wooden

“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”
― John Wooden

“If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?”
― John Wooden

“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
― John Wooden

“The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
― John Wooden, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
― John Wooden

“Never make excuses. Your friends don't need them and your foes won't believe them.”
― John Wooden, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

“You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
― John Wooden

“You can’t live a perfect day until you do something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
― John Wooden

“Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.”
― John Wooden

“It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.”
― John Wooden