“[W]e prefer not to countenance the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so good at one particular thing.... We prefer not to consider the shockingly vapid and primitive comments uttered by athletes in postcontest interviews, or to imagine what impoverishments in one's mental life would allow people actually to think in the simplistic way great athletes seem to think. Note the way "up-close and personal profiles" of professional athletes strain so hard to find evidence of rounded human life—outside interests and activities, charities, values beyond the sport. We ignore what's obvious, that most of this straining is farce. It's farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one pursuit. An almost ascetic focus. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to their one chosen talent and pursuit. A consent to life in a world that, like a child's world, is very serious and very small.”

— David Foster Wallace

Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness
Essays

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[W]e prefer not to countenance the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so good at one pa…" by David Foster Wallace?

David Foster Wallace 185

American fiction writer and essayist 1962–2008

Related quotes

“You have to figure it out you have to be mom and a professional athlete. There’s a lot of athletes going to Tokyo that are also fellow mom athletes and I’m excited to catch up with them and kind of just represent all the moms, soccer moms united.”

Alex Morgan (1989) American soccer player

"‘Soccer Mom’ Alex Morgan Back And Looking For Gold In Tokyo" https://www.teamusa.org/News/2021/July/08/Soccer-Mom-Alex-Morgan-Back-And-Looking-For-Gold-In-Tokyo (July 8, 2021)

“No one-not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses-ever makes it alone”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

“Statistically it is probably the one city in the world where the most people have been killed in arguments over professional athletes.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, (1966)

“I am a professional athlete and pressure is a part of every professional sport. It will be a dream come true for me if I could defeat the Chinese on my way to a medal, so if there’s pressure, there’s also incentive.”

Sania Nehwal (1990) Indian badminton player

"Saina Nehwal Interview: Sportskeeda Exclusive" https://www.sportskeeda.com/badminton/saina-nehwal-interview-sportskeeda-exclusive (19 April 2012)

“We grow up thinking that the beautiful and the talented have been born that way, because they are born rich. The boys in the college gym with fine, muscular bodies—I thought they were athletes because of their bodies, not that their bodies were muscular because they were athletes. I thought I was the only one in the world who had to try so hard to become.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

“It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

“The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance.”

Robert A. Heinlein book To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Source: To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), p. 370 (Ace 1988)

“"Great Athletes" and sometimes "Greatest Athletes in the world today!" (when talking about WWE Superstars)”

Jim Ross (1952) American professional wrestling commentator, professional wrestling referee, and restaurateur

Commentary Nicknames

“One of the redeeming things about being an athlete is redefining what is humanly possible.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

As quoted in "What's Possible" in Fast Company (19 December 2007) http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2001/04/al0401.html
Unsourced variant: Being a champion is redefining what's humanly possible.

“I am an athlete, and as an athlete it’s normal to keep challenging to do more and more.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Interpretation of a Japanese interview, as quoted in an article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/sports/olympics/yuzuru-hanyu.html of The New York Times, written by Jeré Longman, published 4 January 2018. (Retrieved 10 September 2020)
Other quotes, 2018

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

David Foster Wallace 185

Related quotes

Related topics