Quotes from Ryan Leaf

Playing in the NFL, it's a privilege, it's not a right.

I was fighting a war on two fronts. I was fighting the best defenses in professional football and I was fighting the media. At that level you just cannot do that. You just cannot do it. I couldn't stop it, and I didn't try to stop it.

The NFL Legends Community is the epitome of service. This isn't about promoting you anymore. It's about promoting something bigger than you.

If you can't admit your faults how can you ever grow?

Many times somebody tried to help me be constructive and I just pushed them away.

I don't know if I was ever meant to have that flashy lifestyle.

We're all flawed human beings trying to be better but there's consequences to your actions and you have to be accountable for 'em.

I'm going to make a difference in other people's lives because who I am as a person rather than who I was as a football player.

A lot of times people say they want a fresh start, but you can't really have a fresh start because it doesn't happen that way.

I had always been a quick healer.

If you look like a ghost, you feel like a ghost.

I had this giant ego of an athlete, but I was self-conscious at everything else.

Certainly, with my giant overinflated ego, playing in the CFL would have been like failing.

The farther I go East in the U.S. the more I get recognized because of more sports crazy the East Coast is.

I'm not the type of guy who goes to members of my team or the other team and says, 'Hey, I'm awesome,' because I can improve in so many ways.

Lots of time people have the assumption that I'm making so much money that I don't care.

The hole I've dug for myself is very big.

I think the failure in the NFL has humbled me in the fact that I don't think I'm the best.

I was always worried about what others were thinking about me or how I was being perceived.

I lay my head down every night with a ton of gratitude.

When I bought my first house I had all these red flags on my credit report because I bounced a bunch of checks to places like Pizza Hut and stuff like that for $13 or $15 because I was trying to feed my O-linemen.

Football is just a game. Everybody takes it so much more seriously than it is, but there are many more important things in my life.

I'm actually pretty reserved.

I thought I was a god. I was more important than you, because I could do this thing where I played a silly sport that made me a better human being, in my eyes.