Positive Outlets Quotes

Growing up in Terre Haute, Indiana, there's not a whole lot to do. What I did was I just went to the basketball court at the Boys & Girls Club and literally stayed there all day until my mom got off of work.

It's so easy for a kid to join a gang, to do drugs... we should make it that easy to be involved in football and academics.

I was always active as a child. My dad tried to place me in every sport imaginable. I had so much energy, he wanted to push me in a direction where that energy was used appropriately to keep me out of trouble and focused while I was in school.

We can either allow our youth to shoot baskets or watch them shoot people.

Honestly, I was a troublemaker. The environment I grew up in, my mom and my sister, they decided they were going to sign me up in every single thing to keep me busy. I played football, basketball, baseball. Anything, whatever was in season, I was signed up for it. Basketball was one of the things that just stuck.

I've had very deep moments of sadness. What I do is really sob, really cry, do whatever it is, and then kind of release it. Then I can go cook dinner or make a phone call to a friend.

I started a youth center in Houston. The kids would come in and want to learn to box; they wanted to tear up the world, beat up the world. And I'd try to show them they didn't need anger. They didn't need all that killing instinct they'd read about. You can be a human being and pursue boxing as a sport.

Kids need somewhere to go, so they're not bored on the street.

Our young people are out on the streets looking for parties, a place to dance, looking for a scene. No institutions are providing them with alternatives, fun things to do that don't necessarily have alcohol at the center.

I try to cope by doing what I do, what I find purpose and joy in. For me, that has been writing and playing ball. It doesn't make the pain go away, but what else can I do?

My parents always kept my brothers and I in sports to keep us out of trouble.

I basically sat around unemployed in Sydney for three years straight, and the two things that saved me were the rugby league and my dog.

If I wasn't playing basketball, I would be in the streets.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage--self destructive, destroy the world rage--and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.