“These days I smile benignly at the fights that I see in NBA games. There aren’t any broken noses or black eyes, which happened quite often when I played.”

I grew up in the heart of the Depression.

Cooper was my road roommate, and also happened to be the first African American player drafted by a National Basketball Association team.

We had a strong relationship with Walter Brown, and felt that he was the best owner in the league.

I had endured six years of frustration so I think winning it all meant more to me than most of the others on the team.

There were riots in just about every game we played with Syracuse.

I won the city scoring championship as a senior.

French was my first language.

We lived in Yorkville, which is located on the East End of Manhattan. It’s further east than Hell’s Kitchen, and back then it was the kind of place where the roaches and cockroaches were big enough to carry away small children.

I once heard that Paul Seymour said as much as winning an NBA Championship, he’d like to see the Celtics lose a game after Auerbach brought out the cigar so he could go up to Arnold and stuff the cigar in his face.

The NBA wasn’t a big deal at that time, so it wasn’t really in my career plans.

Bob Brannum was my body guard on the court. He was 6′-6 and built like a bulldog.

It also didn’t take me long to decide that Tri-Cities wasn’t for me, and that I wasn’t going to go there to play basketball.

Do your best when no one is looking.

Every jock gets up and tells the world how lucky he is. But I feel that I may be the luckiest one of all in terms of timing and being at the right place at the right moment-even though, for the last 30 years, I was told I was born 20 years too soon, for obvious reasons.

In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.

If you desire the path of sincerity, develop a love for obscurity. Flee from the clatter and clinks of fame.

On June 10, the worst storm in the series swept across the middle of the Indian Ocean and Wild Eyes was directly in its path.

The winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby’s boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below.

On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.

Man is not intended to see through the eyes of another, hear through another’s ears nor comprehend with another’s brain.

In the beginning of his human life man was embryonic in the world of the matrix. There he received capacity and endowment for the reality of human existence.

If Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn’t run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.