Quotes About Adversity

Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.

The forest has always been a place, in fairy tales and in Shakespeare, where you go and discover who you are. You get stripped of everything you thought you were, some type of ordeal takes place, and you come out stronger.

The Taliban is resilient.

I might be afraid of ghosts and like dragons and those things, but I'm not afraid of the Taliban.

The Taliban are terrible shots. At the end of some long patrols, we'd be walking through the fields and get shot at - and we'd just keep walking.

No matter how poor my eyes are I can still talk.

I think you get in a situation where once you start hearing the boos and hearing the radio stations talk and people on the outside begin to bring your name up of being benched, then you begin to lose focus, and now your play begins to fall and you begin to focus on other things.

I learned how fast you can go from being an international hero to being a reference in a joke on a late night talk show.

I've been shut down, run down, talked about, dogged out, but that never stopped me from the being the true me that's here and will be here.

People have talked down to me, and that fuels my fire.

I've talked to Frank Gore, Willis McGahee - different guys who had similar injuries to me. Those guys have been great mentors to me and kept me motivated.

The greatest competitor was Bob Gibson. He worked so fast out there and he always had the hood up. He always wanted to close his own deal. He never talked to you because he was battling so hard. I sure as hell don't miss batting against him, but I miss him in the game.

I grew up really kind of mixed up. I lived with my white grandparents and mom and got made fun of a lot because I talked like her.

Everybody on my street was broke, running around with no shoes on. We didn't have money, but we played tag, we talked. It was great.

A lot of people talked down about my career at some point, which makes sense.

When you've been ridiculed and talked about as much as I have over the course of my career, pressure doesn't exist.

I was talking to a guy who was holding his 18-month-old daughter with the only limb he had left, and he had a smile on his face. I thought, 'I'm not even a 10th of this man.'

I'm talking to anyone who has been dumped - have not gotten the job you really wanted or have received those horrible rejection letters from grad school. You know, the disappointment of losing, or not getting something you badly want. When that happens, show what you are made of.

I am talking about misery and all of its implications.

My first year in Japan was very tough, just like my first year in the minors. But at least there I had a lot of Dominican people and Latin people I can talk to. If you don't have anybody to talk to, you can get depressed. But if you find someone who talks your language, it's easier.

Everybody's gone through some kind of struggle in their life, and I'd like to be the type of voice who talks about it.

I'm not a guy who always complains or talks about getting carries.

The basketball stuff has been the easiest part. The stuff that comes out of it, you lose a game and everyone talks about it on TV the next day. They may say some things that you may not agree with.

No one talks about the epic failures that we all have.