I just can't believe all the things I did that decade.

In fifty years of covering the sport, of course Muhammad Ali is by far the dominant figure.

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.

It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero.

Sportswriters have changed more than sportswriting.

All of journalism is a shrinking art. So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmark in the decline of journalism.

I just can't believe all the things I did that decade.

If I got paid, it was no more than five dollars a column, and I still think I was overpaid.

I was also in love with the English language.

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier.

I worked with Rocky Graziano and Rocky was certainly a character.

I began learning the sportswriting business very early in life.

Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.

I got to know Sugar Ray but I certainly would not say we were good friends.

I think on balance, Don King has been bad for boxing. I think he's done some very good things and I think he did a heck of a job of promoting Ali but I think I could have promoted Ali.

I did not choose necessarily on the basis of significance. If you have a vote for the most significant athlete, then you have Ali, then you have Babe Ruth, then you have Michael Jordan.

Some people who love boxing might love Mike Tyson, but people outside of the sport are generally repulsed by him and therefore, repulsed by the sport.

I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.

My top three were Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain and Bo Jackson.

Sugar Ray Robinson was at the top of the boxing world during the 1950's when it seemed that he would either win or lose the championship about every three or four months.

Today, it's money. There's no question about that. Unless you endorse a grill that cooks hamburgers and steaks, where else can you make the kind of money that you can make in the ring if you're good?

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days.

Also, I am driven by a wonderful muse called alimony.

Sugar Ray Leonard was as close as anyone came after Ali to being Ali, but he wasn't Ali.

What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years.

I was a teenage girl once. I was not an overweight teenage girl, but I had really bad acne when I was 11 or 12 years old. It was heart-rending, and people made fun of me. People whispered when I walked by in the hallways, and I was sure they were whispering about me. My adult perspective is maybe they weren't.

'Vinyl' is a good look at the music industry. The script was honest.

I've auditioned for pretty much every one of my father's movies.

It is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor.

The racing bug is never going to go away. It's like the Mafia.

Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.

I've heard that I've gotten a lighter complexion, as if I've bleached my skin. I think that is so stupid and ludicrous. For those who want to bleach their skin, that's fine. I just didn't bleach mine. I'm a black woman. I don't want to be anything but a black woman.

I'm inspired by anyone who's honest in their own expression, people who truly beat to the rhythm of their own drum.

One can't love humanity. One can only love people.

Christ shared our experience; he suffered as we suffer; he died as we shall die, and for forty days in the desert he underwent the struggle between good and evil.

Every situation I have ever been in I have been trained for, and I dealt with it to the best of my abilities.

As someone who gets nervous in silences, I spill words rather than really think.

My favourite part... I guess it's my legs.

I want to do an album with Steven Seagal.

When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.

I felt that it's best just to be as transparent as possible.

Whoever said that money can't buy happiness, simply didn't know where to go shopping.

Look at Jane Lynch, another Chicagoan. She has a career I'd kill for. She does amazing work; she's famous enough to have some power, but not so famous she has to deal with people buzzing around her life.

An empty canvas is a living wonder. Far lovelier than certain pictures.

A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.

He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.

It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator.

'Crash' was incredibly personal to me. So was 'In the Valley of Elah.' There were things in 'The Next Three Days' that were questions I was asking myself but couldn't answer, like how far would you go for love? Can you believe in somebody who can't even believe in themselves? But this is highly personal.