Hockey is the only place where a guy can go nowadays and watch two white guys fight.

I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."

Usually when an athlete gets a reputation it sticks with him, even when he's an old man.

I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism.

In Hollywood, writers are considered only the first draft of human beings.

I never wanted to be an editor. I never wanted to be a boss. I just wanted to write, and it didn't make any difference whether it was fiction or nonfiction or short stories or whatever. I just - that's what I was destined to do.

The joy sometimes is in the simple beauty.