As a youngster, my mother and father always drilled into my head having something to fall back on. My father was kind of funny. I'd score 40 points. I'd come home and say, 'Look dad, I scored 40.' He'd never have a smile on his face. He'd be like, 'I saw that move you did. What if you'd hurt your knee?'

If you got the game, you got the game. That's why Tiger Woods is out there playing golf with Greg Norman.

The eight years of war since 9/11 had meant several Christmases away from home for most of these men. For soldiers at war, there's comforting continuity in the traditions and inevitability of Christmas.

Military leaders, many of whom were students of counterinsurgency, recognized the dangers of an incremental escalation and the historical lesson that 'trailing' an insurgency typically condemned counterinsurgents to failure.

We need a strong civil society where the connection between different people and groups is firm and vibrant, not brittle and divided.

Americans enjoy the exciting, cinematic vision of a squad of muscle-bound Goliath boasting Olympian speed, strength, and precision - a group whose collective success is the inevitable consequence of the individual strengths of its members and the masterful planning of a visionary commander.

Strength is leading when you just don't want to lead.

Our bureaucracy had excelled at compartmentalizing intelligence - we had a 'need to know' system - but by 2004, it was impossible to foresee what elements of our organization would and would not need to know a given piece of information.

Leadership contains certain elements of good management, but it requires that you inspire, that you build durable trust. For an organization to be not just good but to win, leadership means evoking participation larger than the job description, commitment deeper than any job contract's wording.

I was raised with traditional stories of leadership: Robert E. Lee, John Buford at Gettysburg. And I also was raised with personal examples of leadership. This was my father in Vietnam. And I was raised to believe that soldiers were strong and wise and brave and faithful; they didn't lie, cheat, steal, or abandon their comrades.

You're going to find out who your friends are. Anything that happens in your life is one of those challenges. It may not be at the level of celebrity, but everybody's going to travel that road.

By nature, I tended to trust people and was typically open and transparent... But such transparency would go astray when others saw us out of context or when I gave trust to those few who were unworthy of it.

Leaders must establish common purpose and build trust within an organization.

I came to believe that a leader isn't good because they're right; they're good because they're willing to learn and to trust.

Trust is an amazing commodity. The Afghan people often talk to me about having to develop trust in America, because they believe that we deserted them in 1990 and 1991.

I'm not good at eating small meals. Some people can sit down and be very disciplined. When I sit down at a meal, I sort of eat everything I can reach. I know medical people say that's exactly the wrong formula, but I've made it this far.

My dad was always the soldier I wanted to be.

Why not share with the world the way it is and tell them my feelings about my cat, and how I played with my kids, and how addicted to Christmas time I am, and the smell of pine needles and hearing my kids laugh.

Now I'm way into suits that I can put on whether I took a shower or not, and wear barefoot and paint my toes black or whatever color the suit is. It's very cool to wear suits like that. Roll up the sleeves and just say yee-haw.

Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us.

My wife and I had decided not to let anybody take pictures of our home because it was just the last place on earth we had that was unscathed. But people have climbed over the fence; they've taken aerial shots. They've gotten my address and put it on the Internet.

Don't let the past steal your present. This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone.

It is a waste of money to help those who show no desire to help themselves.

Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned.

I have written two medical novels. I have never studied medicine, never seen an operation.

I like animals because they are not consciously cruel and don't betray each other.

My dad's a firefighter, so I know what it's like for policemen and firefighters to be on their own on Christmas Day.

Houston is kind of a melting pot. There are many different cultures and ethnicities represented out there, even on my team. It's really cool: you'll see so many different things.

Obviously, you get to do a lot of great things and cool opportunities at the Super Bowl. But at the end of the day, we all want to be here as a player. That's the goal, and that's why I work so dang hard.

People always ask, 'Man, why don't you come out and enjoy it? Why don't you celebrate? Why don't you have any fun?' My fun is Sundays. Anybody can go to the club. You don't have to be good at going to the club to go to the club. You have to be good to be playing on Sundays, and to me, that's what's cool.

Growing up, you'd see Michael Jordan on everything from Gatorade to shoes - everything. Obviously, that's something pretty cool for an athlete to aspire to.

The one thing I know is, if I play good ball, things have tended to come along with it. Everything that I've ever done in my career has come off of playing good football. And so I realize I need to go out there, and I need to take care of my business; then everything else - all these cool, great things - come along with it.

I obviously would love to have a girlfriend, but a girlfriend deserves so much of your time and energy. And she deserves to be treated like a princess because that's how you should treat your girls. And if I can't give them that time and that devotion because of my dedication to football, then I don't feel like I should almost waste their time.

Trust me, I would love to have a wife and kids. I would very much enjoy that. But I also know that you have to be in the right place to do that.

My mom taught me from a young age to give back and volunteer any chance you get. It was something that I knew, if I made the NFL, I would financially have the ability to do.

The way I look at it is that somebody in the world, no matter what your field is - teacher, violinist, football player - has to be the best. Why not me?

There's no greater feeling in the world than when you can put a smile on somebody's face just by walking into a room. It's unbelievable. And if I have that power, who am I to waste it, you know?

I'm sure I frustrate the trainers - in fact, I know I frustrate the trainers to no end. But I think there's a very fine line. I listen to their advice. I take their medical expertise very seriously. But then I also, the reason I am where I am, the reason I play the way I play, is because I push beyond normal.

I'm always trying to learn and grow, so my diet has, over the years, evolved.

I get a lot of letters that say, 'I'm a normal, down-to-earth girl. I love to cook, and I love sports.' What I also get are letters from a whole bunch of moms saying, 'My daughter is awesome,' and, 'My daughter is a great daughter.'

I will always do what I can to help others, but when I retire, I want to be a dad and a husband. I want a house and a dog in the yard. I want to have barbecues.

I'm a disorganized mess. My purse is gross: I once found a shoulder pad, string cheese, and a Christmas ornament in it!

If you have a friend or family member with breast cancer, try not to look at her with 'sad eyes.' Treat her like you always did; just show a little extra love.

So I go to my first book signing, and these two girls came up and gave me a piece of paper: '10 reasons you should date our dad. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He's a lawyer.' He didn't know what was going on. He didn't even know me. They called him, and he came down and asked me out that day. Now I'm dating their dad!

Sometimes you have to take the focus off of you and put it on someone else and it's funny what you can accomplish and how much strength you really have.

Life is a series of baby steps along the way and if you add up these tiny little steps you take toward your goal, whatever it is, whether it's giving up something, a terrible addiction or trying to work your way through an illness. When you total up those baby steps you'd be amazed over the course of 10 years, the strides you've taken.

I've had weight issues all my life. I've been on all the diets: Atkins, liquid protein, Scarsdale diet. Now I go to the gym often. I'm always on the StairMaster, and I do weights.

I feel like I've got a pretty relatively extensive Christmas sweatshirt collection.

The thing about Christmas is that it almost doesn't matter what mood you're in or what kind of a year you've had - it's a fresh start.

I just had my 30th birthday and we went turkey shooting. It's what I wanted to do, so we went.