Boris Becker Quotes

“An autobiography is not about pictures; it's about the stories; it's about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people's privacy.”

“Does anyone ask their parents how they are conceived?”

“Every time you are not practicing someone else is.”

“Girls are a distraction and can easily cost points.”

“Girls had never been important. I'd had a girlfriend or two and had liked them a lot but it wasn't love, because my first love was tennis.”

“How do you build a relationship when you've hardly shared a word but suddenly share a child? How do you love a daughter you don't see for nearly two years? When does she become your daughter? How does she become your daughter?”

“I believe that everything in life happens for a reason.”

“I believed in raising my children as I had been raised.”

“I can't change history, I don't want to change history. I can only change the future. I'm working on that.”

“I don't know how many millions of photographs have been taken of me.”

“I don't really care what the man on the street thinks. I never did anything to please him in the first place, and I'm not going to start now.”

“I drew my strength from fear. Fear of losing. I don't remember the games I won, only the games I lost.”

“I haven't lost a war. No one got killed. I just lost a tennis match.”

“I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I Love to play.”

“I want to be a hero, a small and good kind of hero, even though I know heroes have very short lives.”

“I was in the tennis bubble. I wasn't thinking about the big picture. I didn't notice what they said on television, I wasn't reading any papers. I had a coach and a manager, and they kept me in the bubble.”

“I'm not a God, I make mistakes.”

“If I go into a club now, all the blonde girls leave my corner and all the black girls come into my corner. It's as if I'm racist towards white girls!”

“It's silly to say it about a tennis player, but I'm an unbelievable hero in Germany. And Germany needs heroes more than any place.”

“Tennis has to be very careful. Not everyone is a computer, it is very good we have John McEnroe. I hope we have a couple more.”

“Tennis is a psychological sport, you have to keep a clear head. That is why I stopped playing.”

“That's the hard part about sport: as men we haven't started to be in our prime, but as athletes we are old people. I needed support. I lost trust and did stupid things.”

“The eyes of some of the fans at Davis Cup matches scare me. There's no light in them. Fixed emotions. Blind worship. Horror. It makes me think of what happened to us long ago.”

“The fifth set is not about tennis, it's about nerves.”

“The suit-and-tie job is very nice, but it's not really who I am in my heart.”

“We have a guy from Switzerland who is just playing the game in a way I haven't seen anyone – and I mean anyone – play before. How fortunate we are to be able to see that.

If he stays healthy and motivated – and the wonderful feel he has stays with him – he is the kind of guy who can overtake the greatest.”

“When I was a child, I had posters of James Dean in my room. I was a big admirer of his work and was fascinated by him living on the edge. Looking back, my life was kind of the same.”

“When you are thrown onto the stage at 17 in such an enormous way, it becomes living on the edge because every step you take, every word you speak, every action you do becomes headline news. And it became, for me, life or death.”

“Where do you go when you're the best in the world? What's next?”

“Winning is a way of expressing yourself.”