1.
I am the father of twin sons that were born in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1983. They were 13 weeks premature. Gerry weighed 1 pound 14 ounces, and Zachary 1 pound 11 ounces. They were the first male twins to ever survive at Pennsylvania Hospital.
Buzz Bissinger
2.
I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.
Buzz Bissinger
3.
I always had a curiosity about Texas. I had a curiosity about small-town life, although, granted, Odessa's not a tiny town.
Buzz Bissinger
4.
Why did I become a writer? Because I grew up in New York City, and there were seven newspapers in New York City, and my family was an inveterate reader of newspapers and I loved holding a paper in my hand. It was something sacred.
Buzz Bissinger
5.
In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.
Buzz Bissinger
6.
My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co.
Buzz Bissinger
7.
I'm really not interested in other people's opinions, because I think frankly most of those opinions are either misinformed and adding to this endless ball of hot air we have in our society where everyone thinks their opinion is valuable and sacred and what counts.
Buzz Bissinger
8.
If someone is going to criticize what you've written and you believe in what you've written then you should respond.
Buzz Bissinger
9.
Teams are made up of a lot of components. They're made up of hunger, they're made up of desire, they're made up of chemistry, and they're made up of emotion.
Buzz Bissinger
10.
Maybe it's a tired tale, but without an education, you're not going to go anywhere.
Buzz Bissinger
11.
I think a lot of parents are afraid to express certain emotions about children who are different, because they think that it's wrong to feel chained sometimes, to feel anger, to say to yourself, "I never wanted this." I think it's natural.
Buzz Bissinger
12.
Athletics: it's a wonderful thing, it's a spell-binding thing, nothing in life has quite as much pageantry, as much emotion within a finite time frame, it's incredibly exciting.
Buzz Bissinger
13.
My wife says, "You're an idiot! Why do you Google your name and all you're doing is looking for trouble?" Because I'm thin-skinned. Because I don't like to be mischaracterized. I just don't. If someone is going to criticize what you've written and you believe in what you've written then you should respond. Now do I sometimes fall in the gutter myself and look silly doing it? Of course. Some battles I win, some battles I lose.
Buzz Bissinger
14.
But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it.
Buzz Bissinger
15.
I worked at my high school newspaper at Andover, which came out weekly, unusual for a high school paper. Then my first day at Penn I went right to the 'Daily Pennsylvanian' and pretty much spent most of my college career working both as the sports editor and then editor of the editorial page.
Buzz Bissinger
16.
Well I just always wanted to be a newspaper reporter.
Buzz Bissinger
17.
There are the medical dangers of football in general caused by head trauma over repetitive hits.
Buzz Bissinger
18.
One of the inspirations for my becoming a writer was the baseball board game Strat-O-Matic.
Buzz Bissinger
19.
One of the exciting things about reporting is going to places you've never been to before.
Buzz Bissinger
20.
Because Cards' fans are the most knowledgeable and loyal in all of baseball, they booed almost reluctantly, polite as booing goes, what would have passes as a standing ovation in Philly.
Buzz Bissinger
21.
If you leave your wife and you don't ever contact her again, that says something about how you felt about the marriage.
Buzz Bissinger
22.
Actually, my dog I think is the only person who consistently loves me all the time.
Buzz Bissinger
23.
Committing unnecessary surgeries is very, very rare. And it's very wrong.
Buzz Bissinger
24.
I actually like football a great deal.
Buzz Bissinger
25.
I am 5'6' and desperately wish I was taller.
Buzz Bissinger
26.
I don't have many friends in Philadelphia. I sort of have one. I have the dog and someone else.
Buzz Bissinger
27.
I think the older you are, the more you're going to cling to the printed word as being sacred.
Buzz Bissinger
28.
I think the only safe medium are books, because people like to hold books in their hand.
Buzz Bissinger
29.
Your perception plays tricks when you are hoping for something.
Buzz Bissinger