Boston Celtics Quotes

I don't know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody - somewhere - was practicing more than me. ~ Larry Bird

There is an old Yiddish phrase I find apropos - but not by choice: "Man plans, God laughs." I am a prime example. My life was pretty much laid out for me. I was a basketball star my entire childhood, destined to be an NBA player for the Boston Celtics. But in my very first preseason game, Big Burt Wesson slammed into me and ruined my knee. I tried gamely to come back, but there is a big difference between gamely and effectively. My career was over before I hit the parquet floor. I ~ Harlan Coben

Just soaking up the history of the Boston Celtics has been the best thing that's happened to me as a player. ~ Paul Pierce

My most memorable moment came in 1985 as we beat the Boston Celtics. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I guarantee you, if you could give me 10 points in all those seventh games against the Boston Celtics, instead of Bill Russell having 11 rings, I could've at least had nine or eight. ~ Wilt Chamberlain

When she had packed all the artifacts that made up their personal history into liquor store boxes, the house became strictly a feminine place. She stood with her hands on her hips, stoically accepting the absence of old Boston Celtics coasters and the tangle of fishing poles, the old dartboard from a Scots pub, the toolbox and downhill skis, the silky patterned ties which sat in the base of one box like a writing mass of snakes. Without these things, one tended to notice the bright eyelet curtains, the vase filled with yawning crocuses, a needlepoint pillow ... Overall, the house looked much like her apartment had eight years ago, before she had met him. ~ Jodi Picoult

Congratulations to the NBA champion Boston Celtics - they beat the Los Angeles Lakers by 39 points.
Or as Hillary Clinton would say, Too close to call. ~ Craig Ferguson

Karen Russell learned to think from her father, someone Peter Gammons knows well, Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, who used his prominence to support Martin Luther King Jr., to support the civil rights movement, and other important work, including work in Africa throughout his career. And Bill Russell is still at it. ~ Donald Trump

Sometimes you just don't feel the same everyday, it doesn't matter what you do, but when you have people looking forward to seeing you perform for them, that puts you in the mood, and that's natural in Boston. That's why it's such a special place to play. ~ David Ortiz

My mum is very political - left wing - and my dad was in the advertising business. They were both from the East Coast: Boston and New York City, respectively. ~ Joan Cusack

A diarist named George Templeton Strong recorded in the winter of 1866 that even with two furnaces alight and all the fireplaces blazing, he couldn't get the temperature of his Boston home above 38 degrees Fahrenheit. ~ Bill Bryson

We don't have a full black community in Boston. Our people are scattered. There's a middle class where I live in Highland Park but it's not like a piece of Washington or Chicago. ~ Henry Hampton

I will openly admit that I've never really followed hockey. Given my New England upbringing, I have always adhered to the Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins mantra of professional sports fandom, but hockey was definitely the lowest sport on the totem pole - even when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup. ~ Rachel Nichols

If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece. ~ Peter Maxwell Davies

Hi, Boston Center, TMU [traffic management unit], we have ah a problem here, we have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New - New York and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there to help us out. ~ Joseph Cooper

But Brooklyn, in fact, was the third-largest city in America and had been for some time. It was a major manufacturing center - for glass, steel, tinware, marble mantels, hats, buggy whips, chemicals, cordage, whiskey, beer, glue. It was a larger seaport than New York, a larger city than Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and growing faster than any of them - faster even than ~ David McCullough

I grew up hiking and horseback riding in Tennessee, so I love being outside. I will joyfully run 12 miles, but I'm not very good at boot camps. When they start yelling, I start laughing. ~ Rachel Boston

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

As the Democrats get revved up at their convention in Boston, President Bush is fighting back the only way he knows how: by going on vacation! Ah, it's nice to take a rest, replenish your supply of smirks. The vacation was expected, because Bush traditionally takes a month off every summer to relax and avoid reading National Security Warnings. ~ Craig Kilborn

At Boston University, I motivated negatively, and I found that although it can work at first, by the end of the year everyone is dying for the year to end and you have lost them. The last two years at BU, I motivated positively and got much better results. ~ Rick Pitino

To B-major or B-minor: that is the question. Consider that the major and minor chords are separated by the smallest tonal step which is one half-step carrying in its pitch the gravity of all humanity which needs the major to recognize its relative, inherent tragedy which once given expression seeks the resurrection that only the major can procreate which self-expression gives beauty to the harmony of the major which then confirms the whole truth of the tragic minor saga which overcomes the hidden hand of destiny in the great ellipse of being and the greater cosmic void of nothingness which passage of time has sadly destined to be replayed in the same octave of the ineluctable modality of the audible which ellipse with such a simple twist resonates as infinity which is both meaningless beyond all human capacity for understanding but which holds within it the ubiquitous mystic beauty and truth of the pulsing human heart. ~ David B. Lentz

Served her right, really, having sex in a supply closet of the Boston Hyatt. But George had smelled like oranges and leather and he had bent her over one of those carts housekeeping wheeled around with soaps and shower caps and dry-cleaning request forms. That had been fun, and afterward she had pocketed some shampoo and conditioner. ~ Magnus Flyte

I curled my lip at the sight of sizzling human hair and skin clinging to my demon flesh. Damn, I'd have given anything to be back in Boston, sipping chai tea latte." ~ Muse, Ties That Bind, #5 The Veil Series. ~ Pippa DaCosta

The Truth the Dead Know


For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

Anne Sexton was a model who became a confessional poet, writing about intimate aspects of her life, after her doctor suggested that she take up poetry as a form of therapy. She studied under Robert Lowell at Boston University, where Sylvia Plath was one of her classmates. Sexton won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1967, but later committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning. Topics she covered in her poems included adultery, masturbation, menstruation, abortion, despair and suicide. ~ Anne Sexton

Let's use the energy of this historic year to propel us toward our shared vision of a greater Boston. ~ Thomas Menino

Under "Activities and Interests," it was written "Boston Red Sox." The Boston Red Sox, an activity and an interest. Not a devotion to be suffered. Not a solemn vow in the off-season. Not a memorial to a dead man. Not a calling beyond reason. Just an interest. I take an interest in when they play, whether home or away, whether they win or lose
things like that. Maybe read about it in the paper the next morning. Millions of others just like me, taking an interest. Not "Coronaries and Rehabilitations." Not "Dedications and Forfeitures." Not "Life and Death." "Activities and Interests." This was how it was presented, in terrifying simplicity. What it was all reduced to, the thirty years, and the stupid tears, and every extra inning. An activity and an interest. ~ Joshua Ferris

Seemingly every year at least one of the league's top sluggers can be found in Boston's lineup - and often times more than one. David Ortiz was second or third in slugging five consecutive seasons from 2003-07. Manny Ramirez was in the top five in slugging six consecutive seasons from 2001-06. Manny and Big Papi were one-two in slugging in 2004, and from 2003-06 Boston's big bats gave the club two of the league's top five sluggers - something no other team in the league could boast. ~ Tucker Elliot

Just to be in Boston, in Cambridge, on a Monday night was very horrifying to me. It frightens me . . . All the stores closing up by 5 or 6, coffeehouses being open maybe until 11, just the sense that the world shuts down and you're left with yourself. ~ Ann Douglas

Sharon shook her head. "He's never come here," she said. "And besides, he was in Boston that night at some convention." "He's a salesman?" asked Kinderman. "A lawyer. ~ William Peter Blatty

In 1866, when it was noon in Washington, D.C., the official local time in Savannah was 11:43; in Buffalo, 11:52; in Rochester, 11:58; in Philadelphia, 12:07; in New York, 12:12; and in Boston, 12:24. There ~ Alan Burdick

My heart goes out to the people of the city of Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones in such a senseless and heartless way. ~ Matt Damon

It's all about hustling, whether it's in Boston or the film industry. I've been hustling my entire life - acting my way into trouble and acting my way back out again. I'm just fortunate to have had the opportunity to apply it in a different direction. ~ Mark Wahlberg

That winter he was invited to give a reading at the University of Massachusetts (Boston), but not a single person showed up. He sat in the silent lecture hall while his two sponsors gazed at their watches; finally Yates suggested they adjourn to a bar. He didn't seem particularly surprised. ~ Blake Bailey

unhappy Catholics should just become Protestants. ~ The Boston Globe

Travel by air is not travel at all, but simply a change of location; so my wife and daughter and I went to San Francisco by train, leaving Boston on a Wednesday morning in June and, then after lunch in New York, boarding Amtrak's Broadway to Chicago. ~ Andre Dubus

Boston Navy Yard; Boston, Massachusetts Tuesday, March 18, 1941 On ~ Sarah Sundin

There's a lot of history in Boston and a lot of history, obviously, in New York with all the championships. ~ Rafael Palmeiro

If you're strutting around Beverly Hills and hitting up these big industry parties every night when you're not making movies, then it's going to eventually consume you. But for me, I live most of my life in Boston. I do things no different from the way my buddies back home do them, except when I go to work, I go to a film set. ~ Chris Evans

I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala! ~ Maya Angelou

It was just me in my basement honing my skills, hearing songs on the radio and trying to manipulate them and then writing over those, and I started with local artists in Boston, writing records for them. ~ Clinton Sparks

I was nearly fired from my second job, which was writing press releases for Boston's public television station. ~ Elinor Lipman

We did experiments with the Boston Symphony for many years where we measured the angles of incidence of sound arriving at the ears of the audience, then took the measurements back to MIT and analyzed them. ~ Amar Bose

I was visiting Marcus and his wife when a friend asked if she could talk to me alone. Teresa was the spouse of a Team member who'd served with Chris. We hadn't spent a lot of time together, but we'd always had a connection.
"I have something I want to give you," she said. "I don't know if it's going to seem corny to you or what, but I kind of want to do it for me."
She pressed a medal into my hand. I looked at it--it was the medal she'd received for completing the Boston Marathon.
"You and Chris kept me going," she explained. "It was almost eerie how, when my legs were tired and I wanted to quit, Randy Travis's song came on the iPod. It was the one he played at the memorial. My iPod was on random shuffle but it was always at just the right moment. I would hear that song and it would spur me on."
Maybe Chris was somehow behind that. People have told me of other inspirational incidents; each one, from simple to grand, has touched me with its beauty. ~ Taya Kyle

It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London. ~ T. S. Eliot

I love the simplicity and freedom of running. A pair of shoes, and you are all set to explore new trails. ~ Rachel Boston

I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror as we glided p. I looked as eroded as the groaning lift. What had happened to the fresh-faced belle from Boston, Mass.? The woman who stared back at me was at the dreaded age between forty-five and fifty, that no-man's land of sag, oncoming wrinkle, and stealthy approach of menopause.
"I hate this elevator, too," I said grimly.
Zoe grinned and pinched my cheek.
"Mom, even Gwyneth Paltrow would look like hell in that mirror."
I had to smile. That was such a Zoe-like remark. ~ Tatiana De Rosnay

The collect-it-all system did nothing to detect, let alone disrupt, the 2012 Boston Marathon bombing. It did not detect the attempted Christmas-day bombing of a jetliner over Detroit, or the plan to blow up Times Square, or the plot to attack the New York City subway system - all of which were stopped by alert bystanders or traditional police powers. ~ Glenn Greenwald

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa. ~ Noam Chomsky