Scorn

by Parris, Matthew;

  Joe Jacoby

  To win, I’d run over Joe’s mom, too.

  Matt Millen

  We can’t run. We can’t pass. We can’t stop the run. We can’t stop the pass. We can’t kick. Other than that, we’re just not a very good football team right now.

  Bruce Coslet

  Baseball is like a church. Many attend, few understand.

  Leo Durocher

  I never question the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.

  Leo Durocher

  I have discovered in 20 years of moving around a ball park that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats.

  Bill Veeck

  There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens.

  Tommy Lasorda

  We don’t need referees in basketball, but it gives the white guys something to do.

  Charles Barkley

  I am often mentioned in the same sentence as Michael Jordan. You know, ‘That Scott Hastings, he’s no Michael Jordan.’

  Scott Hastings

  In my prime I could have handled Michael Jordan. Of course, he would be only 12 years old.

  Jerry Sloan

  A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

  Emo Philips

  Never fight ugly people – they have nothing to lose.

  Wayne Kelly

  Prize fighters can sometimes read and write when they start – but they can’t when they finish.

  Martin H. Fischer

  Boxing is just show business with blood.

  Frank Bruno

  Me and Jake LaMotta grew up in the same neighbourhood. You wanna know how popular Jake was? When he played hide and seek, nobody ever looked for LaMotta.

  Rocky Graziano

  I’ll beat him so bad he’ll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.

  Muhammad Ali

  I’ve seen George Foreman shadow boxing, and the shadow won.

  Muhammad Ali

  Sure there’s been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of them serious.

  Alan Minter

  Lie down so I can recognise you.

  Willie Pep

  Anglers think they are divining some primeval natural force by outwitting a fish, a creature that never even got out of the evolutionary starting gate.

  Rich Hall

  It has always been my conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.

  John Steinbeck

  Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.

  Dave Barry

  There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process.

  Paul O’Neil on fishermen

  I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it’s the only thing I can think of that probably doesn’t.

  John Gierach

  I’m the best. I just haven’t played yet.

  Muhammad Ali on golf

  Golf combines two favourite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.

  P.J. O’Rourke

  Man blames fate for other accidents but feels personally responsible for a hole in one.

  Martha Beckman

  Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

  Dave Barry

  Golf is the only sport where a white man can dress like a black pimp and get away with it.

  Robin Williams

  The only decent people I ever saw at the racecourse were horses.

  James Joyce

  If you remove the gambling, where is the fun in watching a load of horses being whipped by midgets?

  Ian O’Doherty

  A major rugby tour by the British Isles to New Zealand is a cross between a medieval crusade and a prep-school outing.

  John Hopkins

  We’ve lost seven of our last eight matches. Only team that we’ve beaten was Western Samoa. Good job we didn’t play the whole of Samoa.

  Gareth Davies

  I’d like to thank the press from the heart of my bottom.

  Nick Easter

  Rugby football is a game I can’t claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squelch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.

  P.G. Wodehouse

  Rugby is a good occasion for keeping 30 bullies far from the centre of the city.

  Oscar Wilde

  In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Football is a simple game; twenty-two men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans win.

  Gary Lineker

  I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one.

  Brian Clough

  They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I wasn’t on that particular job.

  Brian Clough

  We talk about it for twenty minutes and then we decide I was right.

  Brian Clough

  Beckham? His wife can’t sing and his barber can’t cut hair.

  Brian Clough

  Ah yes, Frank Sinatra. He met me once, you know?

  Brian Clough

  When I go, God’s going to have to give up his favourite chair.

  Brian Clough

  It’s a huge honour to wear number seven at Liverpool. I think about the legends: Dalglish, Keegan, and that Australian guy.

  Luis Suárez

  A virgin.

  Peter Crouch, when asked what he would be if he weren’t a footballer

  I hope I don’t come across as bitter and twisted, but that man can rot in hell for all I care.

  Roy Keane on Ireland manager Mick McCarthy

  Mick, you’re a liar … you’re a fucking wanker. I didn’t rate you as a player, I don’t rate you as a manager, and I don’t rate you as a person. You’re a fucking wanker and you can stick your World Cup up your arse. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are the manager of my country! You can stick it up your bollocks.

  Roy Keane to Mick McCarthy, before being sent home from the 2002 World Cup in disgrace

  I did want to nail him and let him know what was happening. I wanted to hurt him and stand over him and go: ‘Take that, you cunt.’ I don’t regret that. But I had no wish to injure him.

  Keane on Alf-Inge Haaland, whom he tackled violently and injured in revenge for an incident years earlier. Haaland eventually retired from complications relating to the injury.

  At the end of the day they need to get behind the team. Away from home our fans are fantastic, I’d call them the hardcore fans. But at home they have a few drinks and probably the prawn sandwiches, and they don’t realise what’s going on out on the pitch. I don’t think some of the people who come to Old Trafford can spell ‘football’, never mind understand it.

  Roy Keane on the fans of the club he played for, Manchester United

  Fuck off back to France, you French motherfucker.

  Alleged words of Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmons to Eric Cantona, as Cantona walked off the pitch. Cantona responded with a flying kung-fu kick, for which he was later charged with assault and banned from football for 8 months.

  He’s six foot something, fit as a flea, good looking – he’s got to have something wrong with him. Hopefully he’s hung l
ike a hamster – that would make us all feel better. Having said that, my missus has got a pet hamster at home, and his cock’s massive.

  Blackpool manager Ian Holloway on Cristiano Ronaldo

  I write like a two-year-old and I can’t spell. I can’t work a computer. I don’t even know what an email is. I’ve never sent a fax or a text message. I’m the most disorganised person in the world. I can’t even fill in the team-sheet.

  Harry Redknapp on himself

  Do you think I would enter into a contract with that mob? Absolutely no chance. I would not sell them a virus.

  Sir Alex Ferguson, in December 2008, on the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid. Ronaldo was sold the following summer for £80m.

  I think he is one of these people who is a voyeur. He likes to watch other people. There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea.

  Chelsea manager José Mourinho on Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger

  If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I’d pull the curtains.

  Bill Shankly

  Football is a simple game, complicated by idiots.

  Bill Shankly

  Football is war minus the shooting.

  George Orwell

  Football is popular because stupidity is popular.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  The politics of Fifa, they make me nostalgic for the Middle East.

  Henry Kissinger

  Runners run because they love running. Joggers jog because they love cake.

  Stuart Heritage

  Cycling releases a chemical that makes you feel utterly smug and superior for the rest of the day.

  Mark Steel

  I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

  Alice Munro

  Celebrity

  The main advantage of being famous is that when you bore people at dinner parties they think it is their fault.

  Henry Kissinger

  Being famous is like having dementia. Everyone knows who you are, but you don’t know who they are.

  Michael Douglas

  Anyone enquiring: ‘Do you know who I am?’ is effectively asking: ‘Do you know who I was?’

  Marina Hyde

  Celebrity is just obscurity biding its time.

  Carrie Fisher

  Beware the celebrity who refers to himself in the third person.

  Jemima Khan on Julian Assange

  When I read the lives of celebrities in our newspapers I sometimes wish we had a Freedom From Information Act.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  I’d rather have a rectal examination on live TV by a fellow with cold hands than have a Facebook page.

  George Clooney

  Malibu is the only place in the world where you can lie on the sand and look at the stars – or vice versa.

  Joan Rivers

  To people making mean comments about my G[olden] G[lobe] pics, I mos def cried about it on that private jet on my way to my dream job last night. #JK

  Gabourey Sidibe, actress, on Twitter

  I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all.

  Coco Chanel

  A whole family of women who take the faces they were born with as a light suggestion.

  Amy Schumer on the Kardashians

  When someone asks me, ‘What do you do?’ under my breath I want to say, ‘Ask my fucking bank account what I do.’

  Kim Kardashian

  You know why she’s the most Googled person? Because she was Googling herself.

  Khloe Kardashian on her sister Kim

  If Kim wants us to see a part of her we’ve never seen, she’s gonna have to swallow the camera.

  Bette Midler on Kim Kardashian, after the latter had tweeted a nude selfie

  A walking X-ray.

  Oscar Levant on Audrey Hepburn

  A vacuum with nipples.

  Otto Preminger on Marilyn Monroe

  It’s like kissing Hitler.

  Tony Curtis on kissing Marilyn Monroe

  Her body has gone to her head.

  Barbara Stanwyck on Marilyn Monroe

  Like a condom full of walnuts.

  Clive James on Arnold Schwarzenegger

  He has turned alarmingly blond – he’s gone past platinum, he must be into plutonium; his hair is coordinated with his teeth.

  Pauline Kael on Robert Redford

  His skin looks like a child’s sandpit after heavy rain.

  Lynn Barber on Robert Redford

  His ears make him look like a taxi-cab with both doors open.

  Howard Hughes on Clark Gable

  If you say ‘Hiya, Clark, how are you?’ he’s stuck for an answer.

  Ava Gardner on Clark Gable

  A face unclouded by thought.

  Lillian Hellman on Norma Shearer

  Jeremy Clarkson is like Marmite. Disgusting.

  Peter Serafinowicz

  What is she peddling, anyway? Sex repeal?

  Mae West on Twiggy

  She looks like she combs her hair with an egg-beater.

  Louella Parsons on Joan Collins

  In real life, Keaton believes in God. But she also believes that the radio works because there are tiny people inside it.

  Woody Allen on Diane Keaton

  I’d rather have a cup of tea than go to bed with someone – any day.

  Boy George

  That big blob … too bad there’s not a closet big enough for him to hide in.

  Rupert Everett on Boy George

  Boy George is all England needs: another queen who can’t dress.

  Joan Rivers

  @PIERSMORGAN: I currently air in 200 countries/territories – how you getting on? #SmallPondMinnow

  @GARYLINEKER: I think the 2 world cups I played in probably edged that

  Exchange between Piers Morgan and Gary Lineker on Twitter

  What a monumental twat this man is.

  Jeremy Clarkson on Piers Morgan

  Being called a ‘monumental twat’ by a pot-bellied pig @ JeremyClarkson who wants nurses executed is the purest definition of irony.

  Piers Morgan responding to Jeremy Clarkson

  Ghastly simpering thespian toad.

  Piers Morgan on Rupert Everett

  The definition of countryside is the murder of Piers Morgan.

  Stephen Fry

  Basically a slug.

  Tony Blair on Piers Morgan

  If name-dropping were an Olympic sport, Yentob would be suspected of doping.

  Henry Mance on Alan Yentob

  The shit hits the fan.

  Headline suggested by Kenneth Tynan after Rex Harrison punched an autograph hunter

  Food and Drink

  I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead, not sick and wounded.

  Woody Allen

  Cheese – milk’s leap towards immortality.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Only the dull are brilliant at breakfast.

  Oscar Wilde

  Custard is a detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow and the cook.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

  Mark Twain

  The national dish of America is menus.

  Robert Robertson

  American society is pyramid-shaped: the further down you go, the wider people grow.

  Craig Brown, the Daily Telegraph

  My mother was a good recreational cook, but what she basically believed about cooking was that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.

  Nora Ephron

  Life is too short for platonic love affairs or savoury desserts.

  Food writer Josh Ozersky

  Avoid any restaurant where a waiter arrives with a handful of kniv
es and forks just as you reach the punchline of your best story and says: ‘which of you is having the fish?’

  John Mortimer

  We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.

  Alfred E. Newman

  Fish is the only food considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.

  P.J. O’Rourke

  It was the food! Don’t touch the food!

  Last words of Richard Harris, actor, spoken to fellow hotel guests, as he was wheeled through the foyer by paramedics

  Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you’re going to get it, but it’s going to be rough.

  Adam Hills

  I have always preferred the old-fashioned term ‘drunkard’. Alcoholic makes it sound like an achievement, and alcoholism a branch of knowledge.

  Timothy Mo

  Someone I don’t like who drinks almost as much as I do.

  Dylan Thomas on alcoholics

  I’m on a whisky diet. Last week I lost three days.

  Tommy Cooper

  Nothing good ever happens in a blackout. I’ve never woken up and been like, ‘What is this Pilates mat doing out?’

  Amy Schumer on heavy drinking

  I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learnt how to swim.

  Frida Kahlo

  There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.

  Frida Kahlo who had suffered horrific injuries when her bus hit a trolley. Later she married Diego Rivera.

  One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake thoughts for words.

  Samuel Johnson

  Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.

  Andrea Dworkin

  The trouble with the world is that everybody in it is three drinks behind.

  Humphrey Bogart

  Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks – it says ‘Goodbye’.

  Frank Sinatra

  Cocaine is terrific if you want to hang out with people you don’t know very well and play ping pong all night. It’s bad for almost everything else.

  Amy Poehler

  Cocaine is God’s way of telling you you are making too much money.

  Robin Williams

  Drugs have taught a generation of American kids the metric system.

  P.J. O’Rourke

  Women and Men

  Woman was God’s second mistake.