The Ball Quotes

#1. Language is the net that holds thought trapped within a particular culture. But if one could only strike the ball with sufficient force, with perfect timing, it would perhaps break through the netting, continue on its course, never fall to earth, but go into orbit around the world.

David Lodge

#2. I think that while you're making the film it's important to just keep your eye on the ball and make the best movie you can, and then realize that it's out of your control.

Joseph Kosinski

#3. Players from the Dominican Republic have a history of not playing well in cold weather ... The ball hurts their hands when they make contact.

Grady Little

#4. I enjoy sports movies that don't sugarcoat. One thing that irritates me about sports movies is that they're like, 'The magic of the ball,' and 'The magic of the stadium.' It ain't that magical. When you get hit coming across the middle at 25 miles per hour, the magic's over.

Terry Crews

#5. There are two ways of getting the ball. One is from your own team-mates, and that's the only way

Terry Venables

#6. My biggest problem was to get the coaches to understand that I was a runner, and I wanted to prepare myself based upon the calisthenics I did and get myself ready. For example, I used my forearm when I ran the ball, so I didn't want to do pushups because I wanted my forearms to heal.

Jim Brown

#7. Football is much harder if you don't have the ball.

Sven-Goran Eriksson

#8. As you keep shooting the ball, you become a better basketball player.

Raekwon

#9. In the Philippines around 1916, an offensive style of passing the ball in a high trajectory to be struck by another player-the set and spike-was introduced. These players also developed the bomba, or kill, and called the hitter the bomberino.

Bonnie Kenny

#10. The ball gave me prestige, gave me fame, gave me riches. Thank you, my old friend.

Alfredo Di Stefano

#11. You are the belle of the ball tonight." He said as he moved in closer. "How can you be so sinfully beautiful Mrs. Norman?

Barry Gray

#12. If you think about yourself then you've lost sight of the ball.

Mike Willesee

#13. It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge
into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?

Soren Kierkegaard

#14. The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes, But Here or There as strikes the Player goes.

Edward FitzGerald

#15. No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That's why they call it rewriting.

Steven Pressfield

#16. I think there's something about wanting to stand in the spotlight. I think the ball is a spotlight, for example, and I think they want to stand in that. I a lot of times see - LeBron is a guy that vacillates between wanting to do that and then wanting to get somebody else involved.

Phil Jackson

#17. Hitting the ball has never been my issue, so I can literally not pick up a racquet for two months and hit the ball, really, really nicely. I mean movement's always an issue.

Andre Agassi

#18. The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk.

John Updike

#19. I would probably be a linebacker today. I wouldn't be carrying the ball 20 or 25 times a game.

Bronko Nagurski

#20. Y'all dropped the ball and you should be shamed.

Maya Angelou

#21. Last time I checked I was able to throw the ball a little bit.

Robert Griffin III

#22. I think it's important to know what you're going to do with the ball before it comes to you. So you're always thinking before hand and when the ball comes to you to can make the pass straight away.

Rafael Van Der Vaart

#23. If I send the ball home, I know what will happen to it. My twin brothers will take it out on the lot, like any 20-cent rocket.

Mickey Mantle

#24. I have always passed the ball and worked on that part of my game.

Jamie Redknapp

#25. The run of the ball is not in our court at the moment

Phil Neal

#26. I need you to be my person. I need to see you. And hear you. I need you to stay alive. And I need you to stop kissing other people just because they're standing next to you when the ball drops.

Rainbow Rowell

#27. I talked to the ball a lot of times in my career. I yelled, "Go foul. Go foul."

Lefty Gomez

#28. The big push for me is the Olympics this year. If I'm healthy, I'm not worried about my ranking. I think I can hit the ball. It's just about my body cooperating. It's about being able to play matches in a row. Right now, I'm not sure how much I can do with that, but we'll see.

Venus Williams

#29. It was funny, when I thought of it afterward, how Ruth and Gehrig looked as they stood there. The Babe must have been waiting for me to get the ball up a little so he could get his bat under it.

Carl Hubbell

#30. Bottom line is, if you turn the ball over to a team that isn't as good, you then have brought them up to your level.

Terry Bradshaw

#31. My thought has always been completion. Maybe you have to rebound better, shoot better, hit free throws, handle the ball, defend better. You have to do all those things in the course of a game.

Isaiah Thomas

#32. When you intercept the ball with your stomach, that is great defense

Bill Walton

#33. We need more drama on Australian TV. We've actually dropped the ball on that.

Gillian Armstrong

#34. Only bad golfers are lucky. They're the ones bouncing balls off trees, curbs, turtles and cars. Good golfers have bad luck. When you hit the ball straight, a funny bounce is bound to be unlucky.

Lee Trevino

#35. Did you hear about the cat that ate the ball of yarn?" Mason asked. "No." She was already smiling. Mason Riley was telling her a joke. "It had mittens.

Erin Nicholas

#36. Well I can't rightly say (which player hit the ball hardest), but the ones (home runs by) Ruth hit got smaller quicker.

Walter Johnson

#37. Don't try to strike everybody out ... stay back and just focus on the catcher's mitt, just throw the ball low in the strike zone.

Ubaldo Jimenez

#38. One of my tendencies is to let the ball drift too far forward in my stance, and it's something I've been working on with David Leadbetter.

Ernie Els

#39. I believe in my heart I'm the best player in the world. I'm just a scorer. I try to put the ball in the basket for my team. I'm just confident in my ability to play ball.

Allen Iverson

#40. It's about hitting the ball in the center of the club face and hitting it hard.

Bubba Watson

#41. That Seaman is a handsome young man but he spends too much time looking in his mirror rather than at the ball. You can't keep goal with hair like that.

Brian Clough

#42. There are lots of different parts of movie-making that I participate in, but my favorite part is the making of it. I'm scared, every day. I keep thinking someone's going to throw me the ball and I'm going to go, "Oh, wow. Oh, god. I just messed that up."

Bruce Willis

#43. The quarterback is the leader of the team and the quarterback is the one that has the ball in his hands every single play.

Andy Dalton

#44. In the building I live in on Park Avenue there are ten people who could buy the Yankees, but none of them could hit the ball out of Yankee Stadium.

Reggie Jackson

#45. I think there's a lot of different things that factor into playing good defense, and you just can't say, "All right, if we just hold on to the ball long enough, we're going to play good defense."

Chip Kelly

#46. They've done the old-fashioned things well; they've kicked the ball, they've headed it ...

Ron Atkinson

#47. We have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.

Mitt Romney

#48. At the age of five or six I just used to kick the ball with both feet. I wasn't very good to start with but I practised and practised. Once I finally got it, it was an unbelievable sensation. It was then that I realised that if you work at something, it pays off.

Filo Tiatia

#49. I feel good doing it. It's not like guys are stripping me at half-court or I'm just losing the ball dribbling. I think I'm handling the ball pretty well, just trying to make good passes, man.

Kevin Durant

#50. When Cristiano Ronaldo gets the ball, you can just leave him to it while he beats player after player.

Ryan Giggs

#51. I guess the biggest thing is that I committed to a spiritual center before I do anything else. And I put some daily things in my life into practice and I maintain that, to make sure that I don't drop the ball.

Kathy Mattea

#52. The quarterback is the most vulnerable one on the field. He's in an awkward position a lot of times when he throws the ball. So he does have to be protected. You lose a quarterback, you're in trouble. I don't know if they can make it too safe. I think health becomes an issue.

Bud Grant

#53. Whenever we don't turn the ball over, we're pretty productive. When you're turning the ball over, you're cutting down on offensive opportunities.

Eric Snow

#54. You've just one problem. You stand too close to the ball after you've hit it.

Sam Snead

#55. You know you're going to get burned from time to time. It's just part of the game. So when it happens you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and forget about it because they're about to snap the ball again.

Michael Connelly

#56. Byrd has always been that kind of pitcher, trying to trick you, keep the ball low, in and out. He threw a lot of strikes, worked it inside and out, threw breaking balls for strikes behind in the count.

Adrian Beltre

#57. In football, the worst blindness is only seeing the ball.

Nelson Rodrigues

#58. I am not against being pragmatic, because it is pragmatic to make a good pass, not a bad one. If I have the ball, what do I do with it? Could anybody argue that a bad solution like just kicking it away is pragmatic just because, sometimes, it works by accident?

Arsene Wenger

#59. I've been saying the Occupy Movement has got the ball rolling, and now we need to take the fight to the great indoors!

Ani DiFranco

#60. Your job is to umpire for the ball and not the player.

Bill Klem

#61. There are two basic situations in volleyball - either you got the ball or you don't.

John Kessel

#62. He told me just to keep the ball low.

Chi Chi Rodriguez

#63. The phrase 'off with the crack of the bat', while romantic, is really meaningless, since the outfielder should be in motion long before he hears the sound of the ball meeting the bat.

Joe DiMaggio

#64. The ball itself was for over a thousand people, about half of them game-players; the rest were mostly partners of the players, or officials, priests, officers and bureaucrats who

Iain M. Banks

#65. Batistuta gets most of his goals with the ball

Ian St. John

#66. I try to get control of the tempo, control of the flow, and get my teammates the ball in the best position to score.

Deron Williams

#67. I try to be a smart quarterback. I'm not the fastest or the best athlete, but if I can know what the defense is doing and stick to my job and what needs to be done I can make the plays needed to move the ball and score.

Eli Manning

#68. You can teach all the other stuff, you know. You can teach shooting the ball, you can teach having a good touch ... passing and whatnot, but when you get out there on the field, it's just a mindset you need to go into the game with.

Freddy Adu

#69. With relief help from Ryne Duren, who had no idea where the ball was going once it left his hand, and consequently scared the living shit out of the batters who had to face him.

Stephen King

#70. I will tell you privately it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse all the time, but don't fret. Remember, we play the ball where it lies, and now let's not talk about this, ever again.

Bobby Jones

#71. When you can throw 97 miles an hour and put the ball over the plate anytime you want, it's fun.

Randy Johnson

#72. If there's one thing I've learned from being in the Selection, it's that some girls have a frightening killer instinct. Don't let the ball gowns fool you, she finished with a smile.

Kiera Cass

#73. I just try to keep rebounding the ball as much as I can. I just go out there and do what needs to be done and don't worry about my stats.

Rajon Rondo

#74. If Washington continues to fumble issues like taking care of the debt, getting the troops home, and rebuilding our economy, my wife and I may sit down and say, 'These are critical things and maybe we need to get back in the ball.'

Joe Scarborough

#75. The first couple months, I was hitting the ball hard but had some awful, awful luck. You stay positive, keep grinding out some at-bats, get a couple to fall through, get a little confidence going and keep going from there.

Dan Uggla

#76. I had a wonderful experience on the golf course today. I had a hole in nothing. Missed the ball and sank the divot.

Don Adams

#77. I have a tendency, especially when I'm playing with great players, to try and get them the ball.

Steve Nash

#78. If you can't pass the ball properly, a bowl of pasta's not going to make that much difference!

Harry Redknapp

#79. That's the name of the game ... pleasing the customer. If we ever lose sight of that fact, we've lost the ball game.

Ray Kroc

#80. What I do find enormously gratifying is the reviews my books get from the American press. They are so on the ball compared to anywhere else. It's so satisfying to get a review that conveys the reader understood precisely what I was trying to get at.

Kate Thompson

#81. In 1986, we gave it our best shot but we didn't get the run of the ball.

Michel Patini

#82. My life experience has taught me nothing happens by chance. Even the idea of the ball in a roulette game: it's not chance it ends up in a certain place. It's forces that are at play.

Andrea Bocelli

#83. When we're playing a good scoring center, we tell our team that it is not our defensive man's job to stop the center. It's the responsibility of our perimeter people to stop the ball from going inside.

Bobby Knight

#84. Great clubs have had one thing in common throughout history, regardless of era and tactics. They owned the pitch and they owned the ball. That means when you have the ball, you dictate play and when you are defending, you control the space

Arrigo Sacchi

#85. I was a hyper kid, so I didn't want to play baseball and wait for the ball to come to me. I wanted to play a sport where I could go get the ball.

Shane Larkin

#86. If you have the ball you must make the field as big as possible, and if you don't have the ball you must make it as small as possible.

Johan Cruijff

#87. I just try to just roll with the punches. I mean, once the team pretty much starts closing out, just try to get in attack mode, and at the same time, try to find my teammates. It's kind of hard, hitting the shots I was hitting, to try and pass the ball, but you've got to figure out a way.

J. R. Smith

#88. To catch the ball, face up, look at all of my options and then pass. I was playing hot potato. I didn't want to be the guy to stall the triangle.

Karl Malone

#89. Kilbane did what he normally does: ran his heart out and gave the ball away a lot.

Johnny Giles

#90. The art of acting is to pitch good. You do the pitching and hope that the other person catches the ball and does some good pitching back to you.

Tyne Daly

#91. He hits the ball a long way and he knows how to win.

Gary McCord

#92. I loved playing football. In this particular match the ball happened to hit my right eye, the only one which I could see light and colour with.

Andrea Bocelli

#93. I can score the basketball, but I think I can pass pretty well or I can make the correct pass. I'm not the type of guy who's just going to throw the ball inbounds to a guy who's wide open. I can make the right pass.

Kevin Durant

#94. You just don't want to get pigeon-holed into one position. That's why even though I start out at center, I may play small forward, if I get a rebound and you're not there I can bring the ball up.

Lisa Leslie

#95. Yeah, I'm going to go back (after hitting his 500th home run, but commenting on reaching the 3,000 hit plateau) to my Punch-and-Judy days, hit the ball the other way, start bunting the ball a little bit.

Rafael Palmeiro

#96. I can't stay in the box and wait for the ball. I can't - I would die.

Thierry Henry

#97. I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider. Then, I'd pick up the speed of the ball in the first 30 feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it has crossed the plate.

Stan Musial

#98. The primary conception of tennis is to get the ball over the net and at the same time to keep it within bounds of the court; failing this, within the borders of the neighborhood.

Elliott Chaze

#99. You learn by mistakes. When you make those mistakes, you try not to make them the third time or the second time. You learn from them. Sometimes you learn the hard way. In football, if I held on to the ball too long, I got my butt kicked. You better make that decision quicker.

Ron Jaworski

#100. There's always one shot that I can rely on when I'm not hitting the ball that well, is my serve.

Pete Sampras