Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories Quotes.

1. "in the absence of feedback, people will fill in the blanks with a negative. They will assume you don’t care about them or don’t like them."
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

2. "very few people are able to organize and direct followers, which is a far more subtle and multifaceted skill. Leadership is really a form of temporary authority that others grant you, and they only follow you if they find you consistently credible. It’s all about perception—and if teammates find you the least bit inconsistent, moody, unpredictable, indecisive, or emotionally unreliable, then they balk and the whole team is destabilized."
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

3. "There is an old saying: a champion is someone who is willing to be uncomfortable."
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

4. "But the truly ambitious teams find relief in honesty when they’ve lost, because it’s the diagnostic tool that leads to a solution—here’s what we did wrong and let’s fix it, so we don’t ever have to feel this way again. Great teams explain their failure; they don’t excuse it. Then they pay a visit to Charles Atlas and get stronger. When you explain a loss aloud, it’s no longer a tormenting mystery. I believed in that brand of honesty my whole career, and I knew at least one other coach who believed in it too."
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

5. "life. It gives you vision. But you can’t acquire it if you’re afraid of keeping score."
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

6. "I remember every player—every single one—who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, or in a correctional institution, as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway."
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

7. "I didn’t leave her there for long. When a player makes a mistake, you always want to put them back in quickly—you don’t just berate them and sit them down with no chance for redemption."
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

8. "Quit? Quit? We keep score in life because it matters. It counts. Too many people opt out and never discover their own abilities, because they fear failure. They don’t understand commitment. When you learn to keep fighting in the face of potential failure, it gives you a larger skill set to do what you want to do in"
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

9. "What Michelle didn’t yet know was that there is a vast difference between playing and leading. The point guard position in basketball is one of the great tutorials on leadership, and it ought to be taught in classrooms. Anyone can perfect a dribble with muscle memory;"
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories

10. "I used to call players in and sit them down privately and say, This is the deal. I find myself doing it less and less, and here’s why: you know when they leave your office, they’re going to lie. You could say ten things and nine of them are You are greatest in the world at nine things, but you suck going to your left. They leave and say, Coach says I suck. I like to say things right in front of the team about reality. I like to say, This is what you’re doing and this is why it’s costing us, and does anybody have any questions? Because now they have to confront. They can’t go their separate ways and say, He said … No. Everybody heard it. And everybody on the team already knows it. They just want someone else to say it. You are just the voice of the team calling out that player—and now that player has to react. They have to either admit it, and fix it, or say everybody else is wrong. And if they do that, they further separate themselves from the team. College kids are still kids and are looking for direction. What gives you the stomach to do it is you know you’re right, and you’re only saying what they already know and believe. —GENO AURIEMMA"
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up: A Thousand and Ninety-Eight Victories