Frank Deford Quotes (12 Quotes)

You imagine people are looking forward to it as a treat, ... But the trick, I suppose, is to keep their interest up before you get to the ending.... Above all, you want the main character, Roger Bannister in this case, to be someone you like and you root for.

It was a great tragedy ... an athlete dying young always sets us back. We see them as so strong and handsome. We don't think they'll crumble.

I think really that if they can get back to playing games by the Super Bowl, which is when an awful lot of people turn and look at basketball for the first time, if they can do that, I don't think there will be any damage whatsoever.

She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes.

... proud though I may be of my profession, it never occurred to me that it was meant to be a working majority, ... That more than half of young men in TV would want to cover sports has the same ring to it as if we learned more than half the males in medical school wanted to concentrate on cosmetic surgery.

One brought himself up by his bootstraps ... the other was born to comfort, a college man at a time when nobody went to college. Each saw in the other the thing he wanted to be.

You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches.

At the end of the day it was a guy from Nepal and a guy from New Zealand who conquered the world's highest peak for the British Empire, ... Bannister's feat a year later meant as much to the nation if not more. An Englishman had finally got to the top of the mountain.

He was the first prominent college player ... the first star to be associated with college, and in that sense he made baseball acceptable,

I do wish we wouldn't pander to the same audience over and over again,

It really surprises people, and I understand why, but that was probably the easiest book I ever wrote, because it was simple narrative,

It almost seemed as if the Statue of Liberty had gone on tour, turning in her torch for a Yonex racket.