“I could have watched more film, that’s for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn’t play golf.”

You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

To win a national championship, you’ve got to be a little lucky.

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course.

I truly believe the things Notre Dame stands for.

I do think coaches need to get away from the game more, though. It’s good for them.

My wife doesn’t even want to spend 2 hours with me.

The University of Notre Dame does not redshirt, and I endorse that policy completely.

I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.

If you’re bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals.

Nothing on this earth is standing still. It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they’d be, what position they’d play and so on.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

On this team, we’re all united in a common goal: to keep my job.

If you look at the history of Notre Dame, if you hire a coach who’s been successful at another college program, they’re going to be ultra successful at Notre Dame because the talent will always be there.

I don’t ever remember them telling us or teaching us that the only way we could be more successful is if other people were less successful. They never inculcated the belief that somehow, in order for us to climb the ladder, other people have to come down from the ladder.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

It’s been agony but I couldn’t have done it any other way.

If you look at it, the corset is a very beautiful item, but when I put one on, I realized how little you could actually move.

I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.

I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths.

There’s one thing everyone should understand: I like my character.

Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.