Quotes from Junior Seau

The Super Bowl is a game. Life is for real. What I went through helped me get to where I am today. I won't forget. I can't forget. Because a man who forgets his past sometimes loses his soul and forgets where to go in the future.

I'm not retiring. I am graduating. Today is my graduation day. Retirement means that you'll just go ahead and live on your laurels and surf all day in Oceanside. It ain't going to happen.

You see a hockey player, you'd never know he's a professional athlete. But you put the skates on him, and he becomes a beast.

For dinner I want real sushi - not the Americanized kind. My parents are American Samoan so I don't go for any of those rolls. I'll have raw prawn or sea urchin or octopus. I love it.

As I was coming up, it always seemed like I was learning. If it wasn't from school, it was the 'hood. The influences of the 'hood are very powerful.

Leadership can't be fabricated. If it is fabricated and rehearsed, you can't fool the guys in the locker room. So when you talk about leadership, it comes with performance. Leadership comes with consistency.

No, I didn't forget Samoan - I understand it when you talk to me but, you know, to put phrases together I sound like I do in English.

Leadership comes with consistency.

In order to gain the respect of your players in the locker room, you can't just perform on Saturday. You have to do it consistently during practices, meetings, and in the weight room.

The Boys and Girls Club taught me a lot about sportsmanship, humility, self-respect.

Football is a chess game to me. If you move your pawn against my bishop, I'll counter that move to beat you. Football is the same way. I study so much film that I know exactly what teams are going to do. I love knowing what a offense is going to run and stuffing that play.

No excuses and no sob stories. Life is full of excuses if you're looking. I have no time to gripe over misfortune. I don't waste time looking back.

I've tried to bring the mentality of the outside linebacker to the inside and the rough, tough style of an inside linebacker to the outside. The middle linebacker always has been known as kind of a big plugger. Outside guys are known to be able to run. I just try to make big plays wherever I am.

A lot of children can go back and look at their childhood and find reasons why it wasn't perfect. But why whine about something no one can fix? You deal with it.

I'm living proof that you can make it out of the ghetto.

To chase an athlete that really doesn't want to speak with you and when you finally get him, gives you three words and you have to write a story based on three words of information he gave you, that's pretty tough.

Too many athletes are living in a tiny window. They have no vision for themselves - what they can be outside of football and what they can mean to a community. They just don't know any better. My hopes and dreams are unlimited.

There's a window in my life which is football. I try to remember that it's not going to be there forever. That's why staying humble is important; knowing who I am and the message I'm sending out. I always try to be a person first, before I'm No. 55 on the football field.

No, I want my kids to be Tiger Woods. And Serena Williams. I dig those two.

I was a quarterback in pee-wee football. I always wanted to be quarterback. They're the leaders, they make the calls. It didn't work out because I didn't have the arm. I also played wide receiver my senior year in high school.

My background wasn't one blessed with all the luxuries in life. Nothing is forever and I realize that.

Ryan Leaf is doing great now. If he progresses the way he is now, we're going to have a quarterback that's going to be reckoned with in the near future. And that's not political.

I wanted to perform well for my mom and dad, because in high school, I didn't have a job. My brothers, they worked at Pizza Hut or places like that, but sports, that was my way of giving back.

I'm basically a homegrown American.