Walter Payton

I want to be remembered as the guy who gave his all whenever he was on the field.

A lot of fans were drawn to me because they knew that whatever the score was, I was going to run as hard as I could on every play. You don't have that now, you have guys waiting for next week or even next year.

When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you.

During the off-season when you see other people playing in the Super Bowl, you wonder, and you say to yourself, 'Are you ever gonna get there and see what it feels like?' And it pushes you a little bit harder during that off-season to work to try to get there the following year.

Running alone is the toughest. You get to the point where you have to keep pushing yourself.

Children have always brought a tremendous amount of joy to me and I feel that if you can catch them at a young age you can really change a life. There are a lot of studies that show that one act of kindness to these children has a 40% chance of making that child have a completely different outcome in their life. What you hope is that you can get a kid to believe in something and to believe in themselves.

I try to run on the hottest days, at the hottest time, because that's the most difficult time. And sometimes I worry about drying out, and dying.

Tough times go away, tough people do not.

You look at a Pete Rose to be the terrific athlete he is and then he falls on hard times, but when he played the game, I got something from the way he played the game because he hustled every play, and just because he had one mistake in his life, am I supposed to throw back everything that I gained from him?

If you start something, you shouldn't quit; that is what we were taught. If you're going to play, you might as well play to be your best.

I am happy to say that everyone that I have met in my life, I have gained something from them; be it negative or positive, it has enforced and reinforced my life in some aspect.

What is poor? We had food. We dressed well. We didn't have a lot, but what we had fit, and it was always neat.

I want to be remembered like Pete Rose. 'Charlie Hustle.' I want people to say, 'Wherever he was, he was always giving it his all.'