Quotes About Snooker

Snooker lifted me out of depression.

That period in the late Eighties and early Nineties was when I was playing my best snooker. My trouble was that I had so many bad habits that my preparation was terrible: people like Steve Davis or Dennis Taylor were model pros.

Northern Ireland as a whole is a great snooker country because of Alex Higgins and Dennis Taylor and now of course there is Mark Allen. It's a hotbed of snooker and a place where our sport is always well supported.

I don't really think about missing. Whereas a lot of the other players are scared to miss, I think that if I pot it I'll be in with a chance of winning the frame.

I used to be very lazy in my teens. I didn't practise enough but I was OK when I started really getting into snooker.

Ding has a fantastic all-round game. His temperament is also at a very high level.

Whoever called snooker "chess with balls" was rude, but right.

I do everything right-handed - football, tennis, darts and golf - except for snooker.

I was mad-keen on poker as a kid. It was like the snooker, pulling me into that same smokey atmosphere I loved.

I was a big fan of Naseem Hamed, and followed him. Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry and I know him well.

When the frame's safe, I like to let myself go a bit; play a few more entertaining shots rather than just getting the frame over and done with.

If you're playing the best of 19, and it's 7-7 and there's only five frames left, you tend to take a few more chances.

The worst time was in 1985 when house prices crashed and interest rates went up to 14 percent. I was not winning on the snooker table and I had this big image to keep up - and a lifestyle where I lived beyond my means.

I grew up in south London and spent most of my adolescence in the snooker halls of the area, turning professional at 17.

The best match I ever played in was the U.K. championship final against John Parrot in 1992. I won 16-14 and I felt like I could pot anything from anywhere.

We play Snooker Legends exhibitions and there is never a spare ticket.

The only problem was that I was incredibly houseproud, so they'd end up having sex on the snooker table with me shouting, 'Make sure you don't come on the baize!' which tended to puncture the atmosphere a bit.

The people in China love their snooker. We get a fantastic reception when we go over there.

Snooker has taken such a step down I am not sure it will recover unless five Ronnie O'Sullivans come along at the same time.

I just love playing snooker. Every single frame is different. Not one referee ever sets the balls up exactly the same.

Nobody worked as hard to make snooker a popular sport as I did.

People fell in love with Alex Higgins, a working-class fellow from the back streets of Belfast. That's what brought the game alive.

If you are a single guy and work in a normal job you can get around it. But you can't win professional snooker matches when you are tired.

The tobacco companies and snooker were as thick as thieves.