Gretzky Quotes

The first time I met Wayne Gretzky... he never said anything back.

Tiger Woods, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, a pitcher just before a game, I would imagine they all have nervous energy. But as you perform, the nervous energy dissipates and you start to relax and you start to do what you do best.

By far Gretzky is the most talented player ever. Every time he gets the puck something exciting happens.

We believe in the wisdom once expressed by the hockey star Wayne Gretzky, who explained his success by saying, 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.'

I'd really like to have my own style of game and be known as Jason Spezza, not a Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky 'clone.'

Well, unless you're Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan, you need the full support of your team.

Understand the "Gretzky Factor": Cultivate an instinct, a "touch", call it what you will, that enables you to know both where the "puck" is now and where it will be soon.

Wayne Gretzky's talent doesn't come from studying everything he's experienced in hockey and making long-term game plans. It comes from constantly taking in all the data that's happening in the moment on the ice, and instantly generating constant predictions based on super-efficient mental models he's built in his head. Technology has to work more like Gretzky.

It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.

All my career I've gone to teams on the decline. I went to Quebec when they were losing the Stastny brothers. I went to Edmonton after they lost Gretzky and Messier. I went to Anaheim when it was an expansion team. I came to Montreal after they'd won the Cup and were headed down. I was beginning to think it was me.

He knows all the golf lingo. You know? You hit your ball, he's like "there's a golf shot. That's a golf shot." Well of course it's a golf shot; I just hit a golf ball. You don't see Gretzky skating around going "there's a hockey shot, that's a hockey shot."

Chunking makes our brains more efficient. The more you can chunk something, the faster and easier you can process it. Wayne Gretzky had chunked hockey like no one before or since. Talented people have supremely chunked whatever they become talented at doing.

I realize there will not be another Gretzky, and I will be the first one to say I will not break his records, .. But for him to say that I could, it means I am doing something right. It was probably the best compliment I could get. I'm going to remember it.

When you think of hockey, when you think of Canada, you think of Wayne Gretzky.

I like to think of the world's greatest athlete coming up to bat against me - Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, I don't care who it is - and I'm looking at him thinking, you have no chance.

There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will.

The only way you can check Gretzky is to hit him when he is standing still singing the national anthem.

On how he met Wayne Gretzky: I was in L.A. preparing for Indian Wells, and a mutual friend asked if I'd like to have dinner with him. I think one of his daughters plays tennis so he knew about me. It was obviously something I was excited to do, and I left the dinner pretty amazed.

Talented people can predict with great accuracy what's about to happen just a tiny bit ahead of their competitors. It might be two seconds ahead, or two hundredths of a second, or two days. Napoleon on an eighteenth century battlefield had something more like a two-day advantage. Wayne Gretzky in a hockey game was probably a second ahead of everyone else on the ice.