Quote

How easy it is for a fantasy to grab hold of your foot like a rope, and dangle your life upside down while brigands go through your pockets. Deal with the life you've got. Solve the problems you have, rather than fantasizing about a life without them.

Bill James

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Bill James
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: October 5
Statistician
Writer
Holton
Kansas
George William James
Problem
Fantasy
Dangle
Without
Deal
Fantasizing
Life
Problems
Upside
Like
Hold
Grab
Deals
Rope
Feet
Pockets
Rather
Foot
Easy
Solve
Brigands

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I try to take large, general questions that are difficult to resolve and break them down into small, very specific questions that have clear answers.
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I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.
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There comes a moment during a job interview when you're still talking, but you might as well take off your shoes.
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We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime.
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Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.
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Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.
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Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses. Anyone can become a drug addict if you let yourself do it and, once you become a drug addict, you'll do whatever you have to to get the drugs. Absolutely, anybody can do it.
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A chart of numbers that would put an actuary to sleep can be made to dance if you put it on one side of a card and Bombo Rivera's picture on the other.
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Do people really believe there's something different about the eyes of murderers?
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When I was a small kid, I grew up in the newspapers.
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Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses.
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