Famous quotes containing the words national and/or football:
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (18711922)
“People stress the violence. Thats the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it theres a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. Theres a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, theres a satisfaction to the game that cant be duplicated. Theres a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)