Quotes from Ed Reed

The only way we protect ourselves, the only way a player gets what he wants is by holding out.

Pretty much just stay humble. And continue to work hard and let the game come to me and try not to make even more plays or jump plays. Just let the game come to me and play my defense and my responsibility.

We had church and sports, and that's how we stuck together. We were so hungry sometimes, but if somebody's playing football, you can completely forget about eating until later on that night.

I'm not the kind of person to hold my tongue.

Those inner-cities, they're not giving kids a chance. They're not giving the teachers a chance to really help those kids. They're making it real tough. You're either gonna help or you're hurting your own country.

It's tough for kids to stay focused if they don't have something to get them off the streets... that's where the kids can get into the bad things.

Sometimes I wake up and I think, where did my memory go? But at the same time, I signed up for it. Football has been like that for a long time, for ages.

There will be good and bad, right and wrong. Your reaction of choice, good or bad, has consequences that affect you and those around you.

We're all going to have our trials and tribulations, but you can work through them and everything will be all right.

We are human and regular people at the end of the day. We're not immune from the trials and tribulations that go on through life.

I always know how to play this game. It's about being smart.

Coming out of college, I wasn't considered the fastest, the biggest or the smartest. There was no way around that.

My older brother, he did everything. He played baseball, he played basketball. Just being able to watch him as a youngster, wanting to be like him, wanting to play on the team with him and watching those older guys in my neighborhood play sports.

We tend to want to stay here in Louisiana as Louisiana people. We've just got to be mindful that there are other things out there, and we really need to open our kids' minds to get them to go to college. Get them to get away. Then come back and help the next ones behind us.

I look at the quarterback and the receivers. You look at the quarterback, the formation. I focus on the passing game and react on the running game. You look at it over and over, then sooner or later, it becomes like a movie. You ever notice how you quote movies? That's all film watching is.

Just being from Louisiana, being from the southern part of Louisiana, Metairie, close to New Orleans and growing up in St. Rose. There are a lot of things to overcome.

I was a San Francisco fan when Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott and those guys where there. And I watched Joe Montana get cut and go to K.C. and still ball.

My dad would leave at 4 or 5 in the morning and then I wouldn't see him until evening. The conversations we used to have, he would tell me, 'A man takes care of his home first. A man handles his responsibility. He doesn't ask another man for anything.'

Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can't play this game forever. When I'm finished, maybe I'll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.

We all played sports, my brothers, my daddy, my uncles. That's all we had.

We had a great staff in college, so after I got to the league, I'd already seen stuff I knew. Then it was enhanced, playing the game with great guys like Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, Chris McAlister.

There's a lot of good fans out there, but there's also a lot of bad - I don't want to say bad people, but a lot of people who just want to try to get on your nerves and stuff like that, man.

My philosophy was simple. I was trying to score when I got the football in my hand. There was no question about that.

God gives you talent to nurture. God gives you talent to be something. Some people realize it and some people don't.