Chris Cleave Quotes

For me it's a simple sport and a simple way to live these seven or eight years of maximum sport.

I hope I can make the decision to give up before my legs give up on me. I do not want to be embarrassing on the field and feel one day that I'm not at my best and players can beat me easily in duels.

I play in front of 70,000 fans week in and week out, and I may drop the ball in practice, I may run the ball the wrong way, but once it's game time, it's game on.

There is no life without sport and no sport without competition.

The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character.

Playing football was like being trapped in a rhythm, and my whole career was like that. You have very little time to switch off.

I love the conflict of relationships on 'Justified.'

I have great admiration for athletes. They are just like actors in a lot of ways. They have tremendous pressures and conflicts. They have to compete, and they can't stay home just because they have a head cold.

The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable obstacles. This is true in real life.

I grew up in a sport that didn't allow you to grow up. There was always the threat of younger competition. So you had to maintain the image of youth.

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life.

The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.

I think sport in general affects what people see in movies. I always try to explain to people in Hollywood that we have to make movies more like sport because, in sport, everything can happen and it's so much better than movies in some ways.

The drama is a great revealer of life.

My team has been very unreceptive about the fact that I consistently show them that I train slightly differently than they do, that I consistently show them that I am in better shape for ski racing than anyone else on the team.

My good health, coupled with joy of tobogganing and my desire to be the best, has helped me stay in professional sport for so long.

I know that when a fighter is out of the ring for more than two years, when he comes back he isn't the same anymore. Each fighter is different. But each must think, even if something goes wrong, 'I have to make this decision and live with it for the rest of my life.'

When you're winning, you're a hero. When you're losing, you're a bum... I'm as bad as the fans, believe me. If they only knew how I hate losing and what we go through to try to win.

If you talk to most athletes, the place you're most comfortable is your playing field. I'm not so comfortable at a podium or talking about events.

I think every athlete will tell you no matter what sport you're in, when you train so hard and when you care so much about doing what you do, there's a little bit of nerves that come with that. But nerves that won't prevent you form performing, nerves that, hopefully, allow you to be that much more motivated and inspired to do well.

During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year.

A college athlete is going to be competitive. You don't get to that level if you're not.

I live to be in these matches.

When you become an athlete, you live in this bubble. You're in the world, but you're not in the world.

I like to go out and use my actions to speak, you know, and when I get out there and get on the field, you can probably sense what's going to happen.