John Amaechi Quotes

In my experience, it's only people who don't play sport at a professional level who think that there is anything remotely erotic about a locker room.

I was a man who played basketball and after I played basketball and before I played basketball I was going to be a psychologist, whereas most people who play their occupation is their definition - and then when they stop doing who they are, they become nothing.

I'm a nerd. I like to sit in the library. I don't like to sweat.

I don't need to think that I'm being loomed over my shoulder in order to behave in a way that's moral.

I'd probably have to leave home in order to become a basketball player of any note.

I grew up thinking the best job in the world would be a Jedi and being a psychologist is the closest thing I could get, so I wanted to be a Jedi and I don't want to be a Sith, so that is what keeps me on the straight and narrow.

I wasn't going to let Jerry Sloan embarrass me, because basketball had a proper role in my life. I suspected my basketball philosophy wasn't the bottom line anyway.

In a country like America there are places, many states here still where coming out means you lose your job, where coming out means division, where it means potentially abuse.

You are axes, in a world of wood. And the wood remembers when it has been cut, even if the axe forgets.

I've been captivated by the idea of being on a basketball court and being surrounded by people who made me look a little bit less like a freak.

We need to get past the point where being black and a male means that I am likely to mug you for your wallet, likely to have a minus 15 on my IQ, likely to not go to college and likely to wear my pants below my arse.

I think it's too easy to just say that there is a direct and necessary conflict between black identity and gay identity. I think it's more nuanced than that simply because I think black is a color and then people layer on top of it all kinds of socio-cultural elements.

We need to accept that some people are camp and some people are butch. Some people are pretty and some people are average, but we all fit.

I consider myself a pretty rounded guy. I've done pretty elite things in business, sport and academics and all of a sudden I woke up one morning and I'm a 'big, black, British, gay guy'. That was frustrating at times

Knowing yourself, knowing where you want to get, combining those things gives you the pragmatic steps.

I just wanted to fit in, so probably early on I knew, but it was ... social life was such a distant part of my existence when I was in school that I didn't even think about it too much.