“I feel like I can get a good feel for people.”

Everybody. No matter how they feel about me, everybody on Oklahoma City, on that team, of course I watch them. I support them. I want them to do well.

I want them to get a pulse on us as players, and a lot of players might not want that, but that’s what I want.

I failed so many times and got back up. I got through the toughest times with my family, but I’m still standing.

I’ve been second my whole life.

And last, my mom. I don’t think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were 18 years old. Three years later, I came out. The odds were stacked against us. Single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old. Everybody told us we weren’t supposed to be here.

I want to show people who I really am, especially aspiring basketball players who want to be at this level. That’s what I’m about.

Music has always been a big part of my life. It’s kind of like a refuge for me. I just use it to get away.

I look at my jersey and see the NBA logo, I’m like, ‘I didn’t think I’d be here.’

I’ll play all five positions if my team needs me to.

Work harder than your opponent.

I just loved being in the gym. It was tough at times. Sometimes I wanted to quit, but I’m glad I stuck with it.

I’ve been more content with just who I am.

If I continue to just get to the playoffs every year, I guess you could say I arrived, but right now I’m just trying to find my way.

You hear all these stories about, ‘There’s one in a million guys that make it to the NBA and stay there.’ To see people cheering for me and when they say my name, it’s just crazy. It’s still crazy to me.

I’ve learned what it feels like to lose, believe me. But I think, in the end, that is just going to make winning that much better.

Beautiful fans of Oklahoma City, I can’t say enough about you guys. All the support you give our team. The home-court advantage we have is the best I’ve ever seen. We disappoint you sometimes, but we try our best every single night to win for you guys. And we want to win a championship for you guys.

It’s strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.

I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be.

This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.

Negative feelings are typical of learning, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re stupid when you’re frustrated doing something. You might say to yourself, ‘I can’t do this,’ but you should say, ‘That’s great.’ That means you really have the potential to learn something there.

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.

For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help sooth me.

I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.

I think the song itself, ‘Smoke and Fire,’ is just a metaphor for the feelings that you feel in a relationship.