Tom Brady

You can't score if you're turning it over. It's like a punt. If you go out and you punt 12 times, you're not scoring points. That's not good. So, when you turn the ball over and throw interceptions, you're giving the other team more opportunities and your team less opportunities.

I don't go to bed at 1 A.M. and wake up at 5 A.M. and say, 'Let's see if I can get this done today.'

It's a real strength for me that I've never minded the training process. It's something I enjoy. I really like being in the gym or, certainly, on the field.

The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

I think that at the start of a game, you're always playing to win, and then maybe if you're ahead late in the game, you start playing not to lose. The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

Mentally, the only players who survive in the pros are the ones able to manage all their responsibilities. Everybody struggles in different ways.

You can't go out and practice average on Wednesday, average on Thursday, okay on Friday and then expect to play well on Sunday.

You never get over losses. I've never gotten over one loss I've had in my career. They always stick with me.

To me, football is so much about mental toughness, it's digging deep, it's doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms.

Believe me, I'm much easier to be around when we win than when we lose.

I knew I became a professional when I stop paying attention to what time it was.

You don't like to see your guys take the field without you because it makes you feel like, man, maybe they really don't need me out there, which is kind of humbling.

I don't think the ebbs and flows - get in great shape and then get out of shape and then see if you can get back into shape - is a good thing. So I prefer to keep my arm always ready to go.

Sleep is all about recovering. So if you're not sleeping, you're not recovering. And if you're going to break your body down a lot, you better find ways to build it back up. And the only way to do that is get a lot of sleep. So for me, I go to bed at like 8:30, 9:00. As soon as I put my kids to bed. Because I'm up at 5:30 the next day.

You look at another team's style and how they do it, and you just want to understand how they're doing it and see if you can learn something and maybe implement it into what your team does.

When you're one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.

I think the great part about what I do is that there's a scoreboard. At the end of every week, you know how you did. You know how well you prepared. You know whether you executed your game plan. There's a tangible score.

I don't want to wake up and be bored. That's probably my greatest fear is to have nothing to do. What better job is there than to play quarterback for an NFL team, and certainly one that I've been on for a long time and had success with? I don't plan on giving it up any time soon.

A lot of times I find that people who are blessed with the most talent don't ever develop that attitude, and the ones who aren't blessed in that way are the most competitive and have the biggest heart.

Athletes are always talking about money at a time when everyone else is struggling so badly to make it. We all make way more than our fair share. And I just think it reflects poorly on myself and my teammates. I really do just want to win, and that has and will continue to be the reason that motivates me and is the biggest factor in my decision-making process.

With football, you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren't playing so well, you don't have to turn those two-game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.