You surprise yourself on some balls off the bat. You don't think you have a chance to catch it. And then your natural ability just takes over.
In NASCAR, you can do a lot of banging around and get pretty serious and even get yourself upside down. All of those things can happen - and then you give an interview two seconds later.
When you're the most successful person in your family, in your neighborhood, and in your town, everybody thinks you're the First National Bank, and you have to figure out for yourself where those boundaries are.
A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker.
Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
I had a slight touch of Tourette's, which means you talk to yourself and bark and cry out at night.
Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position.
Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism.
I was a baseball player, I taught baseball, and all of a sudden I was in the business world. Now I used the baseball world to talk about their product. Not too much, just enough to keep going. Just be yourself and you'll never have a problem. That's what I did.
It's not easy to strap yourself down to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know you can direct lots of films, because directing films is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn't.
Are you tall? Are you strong? How big are your hands? You must be honest with yourself or you will end up using the wrong bat.
The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth.
Give yourself more opportunities for privacy, when you are not bombarded with duties and obligations. Privacy is not a rejection of those you love; it is your deserved respite for recharging your batteries.
No one is perfect. Your ERA is not zero. You're not going to have 30 wins. And your batting average isn't going to be 1.000. So you don't have the right to verbally talk out about somebody. Look at yourself. Did you do everything you could do? Did you start your day off right? Are you perfect?
In the Marine Corps, your buddy is not only your classmate or fellow officer, but he is also the Marine under your command. If you don't prepare yourself to properly train him, lead him, and support him on the battlefield, then you're going to let him down. That is unforgivable in the Marine Corps.
When you treat yourself with the kindness and high regard that you would give to one of your spiritual heroes, your body becomes the epicenter of quiet joy rather than a battlefield for the ego.
Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.
The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at.
You can't be different for different's sake, and this doesn't always work, but you have to separate yourself from the normal read. Of course, it has to be truthful. If it's not truthful, don't waste your time.
