I wonder if the Agassi speech was written by the ghostwriter of his excellent autobiography, ‘Open’. It was published in 2009 but perhaps they had already started talking in 2004.
Some quotes from the book seem to echo the speech:
“It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's our choice.”
“Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting meaning. This is why we're here. To make each other feel safe.”
“What you feel doesn’t matter in the end; it’s what you do that makes you brave.”
PS Although William Hague’s voice is teeth-gnashingly annoying, there’s no denying he was whip-smart in his ad lib responses to interventions.
Listening to that debate made me wonder whether a referendum on the Lisbon treaty (perhaps with two questions, as Frank Field suggested, one on EU membership and the other on the treaty) might well have disarmed the anti-EU brigade and avoided (or at least delayed) what happened in 2016.
I wonder if the Agassi speech was written by the ghostwriter of his excellent autobiography, ‘Open’. It was published in 2009 but perhaps they had already started talking in 2004.
Some quotes from the book seem to echo the speech:
“It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's our choice.”
“Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting meaning. This is why we're here. To make each other feel safe.”
“What you feel doesn’t matter in the end; it’s what you do that makes you brave.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._Moehringer
PS Although William Hague’s voice is teeth-gnashingly annoying, there’s no denying he was whip-smart in his ad lib responses to interventions.
Listening to that debate made me wonder whether a referendum on the Lisbon treaty (perhaps with two questions, as Frank Field suggested, one on EU membership and the other on the treaty) might well have disarmed the anti-EU brigade and avoided (or at least delayed) what happened in 2016.