Frank Deford Quotes

Actually, I would love to make a music video. Maybe it would finally put to rest those persistent rumours that have followed me throughout my career - particularly when I was on camera performing - that I had died.

As people get older and fall out of the spotlight, people's memory of them changes.

The problem with fame is that you get frozen in one frame and nothing you can do can alter the nature.

But hey, controversy - well, it hasn't hurt me in 50 years.

Longevity conquers scandal every time.

There's this perception sometimes around here that I'm this Hollywood guy.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

I want to be remembered as a great footballer and a great player. When our football days are over, that's all we are - people.

I'm a footballer first and foremost and I want to be remembered for what I do on the pitch.

I want to be remembered for my roles and films rather than my looks.

Your image in sports will always matter.

There comes a day when people begin to say, 'Why doesn't that old duffer retire?' I want to get out while they're still saying Astaire is a hell of a dancer.

What can you do. You get a name, you're called 'Thomas Bernhard', and it stays that way for the rest of your life. And if at some point you go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you're always walking in the woods. There's nothing you can do about it.

A ready means of being cherished by the English is to adopt the simple expedient of living a long time. I have little doubt that if, say, Oscar Wilde had lived into his nineties, instead of dying in his forties, he would have been considered a benign, distinguished figure suitable to preside at a school prize-giving or to instruct and exhort scout masters at their jamborees. He might even have been knighted.

We win if the world is convinced of two things, that you are a fine gentleman, and a great baseball player.

My reputation is a media creation.

It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.

May my legend prosper and thrive. I wish it a long and happy life.

A great reputation is a great noise, the more there is of it, and the further does it swell. Land, monuments, Nations, all fall, but the noise remains, and will reach to other generations.

I want to be remembered as a great player, but I guess it will be as a player who got angry on a tennis court.

At first I didn’t give a damn to go down in history. I wanted to win. But the more I won, the more I thought about leaving something behind. Yes, it's as important as hell to me. I want to leave something that people will remember me by. Of course, a lot of boxers want to do that. But it's not easy. Take Larry Holmes, he was the big man after Muhammad Ali, he wanted to emulate him, but for some reason the public didn’t take him like they did to Ali. I think people won’t fully understand what I contributed to the sport for years.

Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.

Fame is like a big eraser. It's strange, now that I'm famous. In my parents' opinion, all the shitty things - all the wreckage of my past - is erased. Now it's like I was never the kid who got arrested. Now I'm a wonderful son.

If you talking 'bout classics, do my name get brought up?

A lot of people expect to see the same type of character that they see on the field off the field, and that throws them for a loop.