John McNally Quotes

• We professional athletes are very lucky. Unlike most mortals, we are given the privilege of dying twice - once when we retire and again when death takes us.

  John McNally

  Athlete, Dying, Lucky

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• The whole point of life is to maximize your emotional income. Getting that ball and going is a tremendous physical thrill, an ego thrill, a personal power satisfaction.

  John McNally

  Life, Power, Emotional

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• A coach can't be concerned with the poor ballplayer. If the player can't make it, he's got to be out right away. It's a very tough aspect of coaching, and in this aspect I was weak. Also, some guys get fat on coaching, they get healthy and strong, but other guys get ulcers.

  John McNally

  Strong, Player, Guy

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• If you want to be a fiction writer, you need to start reading like a fiction writer. To do so, you need to learn about craft so that the next time you pick up a contemporary short story, you're reading it not as an abstraction floating in formaldehyde, existing simply for the theorist's dull scalpel to saw on, but as a concrete thing constructed out of words and shaped by syntax, brought to life by a writer who made several thousand choices, some large, some small, before letting that imperfect beauty, the story, walk on its own two feet.

  John McNally

  Reading, Writing, Two

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• At some point, you have to sit down and face the page alone. At some point, the final decisions need to be yours. At some point, you have to give yourself deadlines and stick to them.

  John McNally

  Writing, Giving, Decision

  John McNally (2010). “The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist”, p.75, University of Iowa Press

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