Quotes from Marv Levy

Chronological age is only an approximation of your functional age.

When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.

As a collegiate, I think you spend 50 percent of your time recruiting. It is a distasteful process.

People sometimes ask me to name the greatest coach in NFL history. George Halas may have set the standard, but Don Shula has won more games than anyone, and he has done it in the most competitive era. He had an incomparable ability to evaluate players, to motivate them, and to teach them the game of football.

If you don't change with the times, the times are going to change you.

I'm hoping to get started on a new novel.

My father was an athlete, a great athlete, fought in the Marines in World War I. He was all sports and activity. My mother was all academics. I still have the complete works of Shakespeare that she had.

I don't remember Bill Walsh being old. I remember young Bill Walsh. He wasn't gray-haired, and neither was I when we first met. His legacy will live on. Bill Walsh's name and his accomplishments will be remembered and revered so long as the great game of football is played.

Age is inevitable. Aging isn't.

You adhere to a philosophy, but part of the philosophy I have is that I don't want to be too doggone inflexible that I miss a good player.

I am going to miss Don Shula. I like him, and I admire him. I'm going to miss looking those 53 yards across the field and thinking, 'There is a coaching legend.'

If you say you plan to retire in two or three years, you've already retired.

In Buffalo, you can't imagine how much people revere Fred Jackson because of his high character, his community involvement, coming from a Division III school.

If you start thinking of the Super Bowl championship as your motivation, you are going to miss the trees for the forest or the forest for the trees. I never could understand that one.

Absolutely everything undergoes evolvement - whether it's technology, journalism, the NFL, medicine.

World War II was a must win.

This is not a must-win; World War II was a must-win (Referring to the Super Bowl)

If there's age discrimination - and there may be - I've always felt that the person who discriminates is hurt more than the person being discriminated against, if the second person shucks it off and moves forward.

I was enamored with Charles Dickens as a kid, and his names blew me away.

When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.

Plan your work and work your plan.

I don't know if there ever has been anyone in the NFL who plays his position as well as Steve Tasker.

The age factor means nothing to me. I'm old enough to know my limitations and I'm young enough to exceed them.

I'm about 75 pages into a book on poetry. I don't know if anybody wants to read it. It's on any broad variety of subjects. I walk down the street and think of a topic and jot it down and say, 'Okay, that's another one.' They go from the humorous to the serious to every topic imaginable.