The true experience of a space, she said, might only reveal itself over time, months – years – of being in the space and using it. “And it’s emotional too, right. How does this space make me feel?” I said. “Which could have to do with sunlight or shade. How a building frames its views, works with a landscape. Which could simply be the absence of nuisance. So not necessarily things people even notice.

Family is no doubt a pier glass for one’s own self-contempt. But for all my regret that this should happen now, for all my frustration and incomprehension, those feelings, I knew, had to be set next to my own meager participation in these lives, the implicit idea that it was enough for me to show up now and again for a few days and assume the unencumbered neutrality that may, in fact, have been no different from my habitual absence.

You do brutal workouts to get used to suffering so suffering doesn’t become a defining deal.

She was proud enough to prefer suffering to fooling herself, which was only a less dignified.

I get a huge kick out of training people, out of helping people, out of just being a part of a process that I get to see people’s dreams come true.

You have to wake up and say, ‘I have a fire in me to be better than I am right now.’ That’s your base.

Your job, with all that mental training and suffering, is just to push your line of breaking so far your opponent can’t find it.

There’s an old Celtic proverb that I follow: See much, study much, suffer much is the path to wisdom.

These kids deserve to play. We're going there to try to win the championship.

Fighters have to be optimists.