If I was an actor, it would be like a part that was me. It has to be real to me. I have to make it mine. I really enjoy taking a song I feel that way about, and sometimes it can take a long time to come up with just the right touch. I think that's really my greatest talent, interpreting.

Steve Young

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

Steve Young

change motivational sports

Everything you do in life is up to you. Part of life is realizing you have much more potential and ability than you'd ever know, but it's up to you to face the fears and unleash that which really drives you.

Steve Young

up-to-you life-is faces

Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that's the truth in people's minds.

Steve Young

perception reality people

My dad, like any coach, has always stressed the fundamentals. He taught me responsibility, accountability, and the importance of hard work.

Steve Young

fathers-day dad responsibility

I always felt like hanging around the pocket was trouble, but the truth is, the great players take the beatings in the pocket and expose themselves -- and that is the real risk.

Steve Young

risk real player

I was a young folk singer, or wanted to be. I really wanted to be a New England folk singer, but they never would accept me. I was always hard to categorize, and people wouldn't know what to make of it.

Steve Young

singers england people

My goal--and this is kind of my own little secret--but when I get married, just to head out and finish football and, and, and be a missionary around the world. Places where Steve Young--not that it's big really that many places--but places where they have no idea about football.

Steve Young

goal football ideas

A running quarterback, to me, is safer. Because, once I got out [of the pocket], I didn?t run where there were a lot of people. I ran where there was nobody.

Steve Young

pockets running people

I may yet move [from Nashville], and where would I move if not Texas or New Mexico? I couldn't afford a home in California. I need to travel out of there occasionally.

Steve Young

texas home moving

I was made to go to church and I heard the gospel songs, and every now then somebody would come through with a guitar and that was a thrill!

Steve Young

guitar church song

When you're an elite athlete, it's a very special moment in time and you don't want it to end.

Steve Young

nfl athlete special

I had admired Waylon [ Jennings], but I never expected to meet him and get to know him. When I finally moved to Nashville years later, one night I went to a Harlan Howard Guitar Pull thing, and there was Waylon. He started talking about how much he loved my work and how great I was, and I couldn't even get a word in.

Steve Young

nashville talking night

I will be a missionary in a remote village at some point.

Steve Young

village missionary

There are a lot of guys kind of on the bubble that can either be that sort who turn into journeyman kind of guys that will find a new spot or guys that can make a claim to be in one place for a long time. You can name a lot of names this year, an unusual number. And I think that most of them will be OK.

Steve Young

names years thinking

The wins and losses are over for Rice, the football player, who leaves with 38 NFL records. He was the easiest guy in the world to throw the football to, ... You always knew where he was headed.

Steve Young

winning loss football

Fundamentally, if the league is going to have a no-tolerance policy for domestic abuse, if we're going to be a global organization that's going to have this as a perspective, we've got to back it up. We can't be backed into it with a video with more coming out. We have to make an affirmative stand on it.

Steve Young

perspective organization league

First of all, I wish everyone who loved football could stand in the quarterback's shoes just for a play, because I think it would be tremendously humbling to anyone who loved the game to say, "I didn't -- I had no idea." You can think about what it would be like, and the cameras are getting better at giving that perspective, that one that the skycam comes down and you get a sense of it, but you just -- you don't know.

Steve Young

games football thinking

I did admire the comments and the music of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. And that didn't fly too well in the Deep South. It was not quite redneck enough.

Steve Young

redneck woody enough

I was known to spout off about [ politics and religion] sometimes, especially in my drinkin' days! It was pretty dangerous actually.

Steve Young

religion-and-politics dangerous sometimes

If I wasn't so lazy, or if I had a roadie, I'd have a line of guitars on stage. I'd have a lap steel and a nylon string up there, but who wants to keep up with all that?

Steve Young

nylon lazy guitar