Quotes About Preparation

Before a show, I usually give myself two-and-a-half hours to get ready. I prepare my shoes first. New ballet pumps can sound like tap shoes. You have to take the noise out of them by hitting them against stone. It takes half an hour to do each pair, and I can go through three pairs in one night.

I tap my fingers and cheekbones before going on stage to calm down. But nerves are necessary; if you ever lose them, it's a bad sign.

I wear football socks and I actually tape my shoelaces to my socks. I don't like anything to be putting me off. I don't have an excuse of the shoelaces coming off.

There's a lot of things that go into scoring touchdowns and leading your team. It's not just the game itself, but going back and studying tape to pick apart everything I did. It's nice to have something to go on, doing it full speed in a game situation.

Anytime you fight a champion, you got to watch the tape closely and study him closely.

When we're not on the practice field, I'm watching tape, and when I'm not watching tape, I'm doing body work or something like that.

I usually tape about 99 percent of my auditions at my house. I have a camera and record myself, and my mom reads the other lines off-camera. Then I send it to my agent and manager, and they send it to the casting director, and we see how it goes from there.

I have to figure out different ways to get into the moves that I do because everyone has a different offense, and I need different counters to go into my moves, and that's more down to tape watching.

I watch a little bit of tape to pick up small stuff, but I don't try to pick apart my opponent's game plan. I'm going to keep coming forward. I don't ever take a step backward. I get hit, and I'm right back into range.

I watch a lot of tape. Anytime I have a match on TV, I watch it back, 10-20 times alone.

Going into an audition or putting yourself on tape, it's not the easiest thing to do especially because an audition is usually a camera and one person and then you have to bring to life this character.

I'll watch a highlight tape of my kicks and I'll play a song that I like the night before the game and then I'll sing that song in my head to visually get myself ready and have positive thoughts.

It's such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines.

I have a lyric journal that I write in a lot. When I'm going to play, I just sit down and have my books with me and my notes and tapes and whatever I need to refer to. I just play and try different things. It's a kind of discipline.

I don't have tapes of meditation, but I put on the meditation station. I did as a player, too. I used to always play the game before the game happened. As a coach, I do the same thing.

My favorite thing is to go out in the arenas, like, an hour before doors, and run the concourse. And you get that anticipation. You smell the popcorn. You see the people tapping the kegs. And nobody is in there yet but you, but you feel it. It's my favorite thing on tour.

You don't want to put all your lead on the target. You want to leave some arrows in the quiver.

Counterterrorism analysts have known for years that al Qaeda prepares for attacks with elaborate 'targeting packages' of photographs and notes.

Sometimes when you play a golf course for the first time, you just got to be committed to your targets.

You can't control what the other athlete is going to do; you can't control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task.

I'm always staying motivated because, as training camp goes on, practices become more intense, harder, and shorter. It's a mental thing, too, not only physical - you have to stay mentally sharp and stay focused on the task in front of you.

The prizes go to those who meet emergencies successfully. And the way to meet emergencies is to do each daily task the best we can.

Speaking can be a lot like exercise: The more time you spend getting ready, the more you mentally build the task into something larger than it actually is.

As a co-chair of the State's 2010 Olympics Task Force, I am working to make sure our border crossings are ready to handle the risks and benefits the Games will bring.