“You’ve got to have them down before you can even think about playing.”

You know when I played, you had me and Kevin (McHale) and some others throughout the league.

The nature of competition is such that any number of people invariably have their eyes on the same prize you do. Recognize your assets and employ them to the best of your ability.

Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.

When I was young, I never wanted to leave the court until I got things exactly correct. My dream was to become a pro.

While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use.

It’s been a journey, the NBA. It’s taken me a lot farther than I ever expected.

Before every game I used to go out and shot the same shots over and over and over. In the summer time I spent a lot of time just shooting. So really it just came natural.

The more you win, the better you’re gonna get. It grows on itself.

I think that takes it all. That’s the greatest thing you could ever achieve in your sport. So, I have been very fortunate to play on great teams, but the gold medal was probably the best.

Don’t let winning make you soft. Don’t let losing make you quit. Don’t let your teammates down in any situation.

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you’re ready to play as tough as you’re able to, you’d better go out there and do it..

I used to love the feeling of running, of running too far. It made my skin tingle.

I was always making decisions and they were easier decisions because I had control of the game.

When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball.

I’ve been around a while. I kinda know these things.

My coach told me, “Larry, no matter how much you work at it, there’s always someone out there who’s working just a little harder – if you take 150 practice shots, he’s taking 200.” And that drove me.

This was it. Together. Forever. As we left it all behind, the sun warmed my back, lighting the way before us. I knew of no better omen.

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse’s breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature’s laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

The reason I play so hard is that somewhere out there is some kid who has never seen me play before, and I don’t want to disappoint him.

It’s a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you’ve been to all the places you don’t need to be.

Evil is… a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world

I got love for Damon Dash as I did before. I don’t know if we can be around each other in that way because times have changed. He may be a totally different person.