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" My parents had the plan for my life from the moment my mother tested positive with me. Looking back now, I'd say the hard turn for me was when I left school after the eighth grade to play tennis full time and study some with a travelling tutor. "

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" Dad met Mom in 1983 during the lead-up to the 1984 games. She was an Olympic downhill skier. In those days, the winter and summer games were held in different cities but in the same year, so there was more intermingling of winter and summer athletes at social functions. "

Douglas Brunt

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Winter

" I like to write in the mornings, so I try to protect 9 A.M. - 12 P.M. for me. I can drop our older two kids at school then write for a few hours. "

" On Wall Street, every story becomes known so quickly. They are all so connected that everything disseminates there faster than anywhere. "

" The job for cable is to give the news and then also give the 'so what.' "

" In September of 2001, I was living in the West Village of Manhattan, working from my home for a tech start-up. "

" I've thought about bringing my children to retrace my own steps of the morning of September 11, 2001, but they're too young for that. Maybe when they're twenty. Maybe by then, even though it's been only a short subway ride away for years now, I'll have the nerve to see the 9-11 memorial for the first time. "

" There used to be a few 'Great Santinis', but now there's many 'Great Santinis'. "

" I did interviews with tennis greats, like James Blake and John Isner. I also interviewed tennis pros who aren't well - known but who made all the same sacrifices but had just a little spark of a professional career and are now still orbiting the sport, either as a teaching pro or a coach. "

" Style matters, but the real force of writing is ideas, not style. "

" If you look at top players - Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi - so many had a parent who was domineering to the point where you really had to question his sanity. It was nuts. "

" I'm really troubled by the prevalence of single-sport specializations. I want my kids to do as many things for as long as they can. Specialization is a natural thing that should come later - it shouldn't come for 8-year-olds. "

" In my first book, 'Ghosts Of Manhattan,' the setting was Wall Street, and I explored the predictable nature of a bond trader inside the compensation scheme at Bear Stearns and the government regulations of Wall Street. That was about money. "

" The important thing is to write when your brain is at its best. Work edits or do outside reading with the rest of the day. "

" A comparison of the average professional baseball salary to the national average salary over the last one hundred years shows that for the first fifty years, 1920-1970, baseball players held a steady multiple of about 3.4 times the national average income. "

" Dad was a retired hedge fund manager who made enough millions to retire and focus on my game. Before that, he was on the 1984 U.S. Olympic swimming team. No medals. He was accustomed to winning at everything, but no medals in 1984. "

" I've seen terrorism close up, but I don't live in a state of terror at all. I'm comfortable going to the Manhattan Thanksgiving Day Parade, the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, Times Square on New Years Eve. For perspective, the world today is a safer place than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Airlift, World War II. "

" At six years old, our son had friends who played soccer from 4 P.M. to 7 P.M., Monday through Friday. A six-year-old practicing as much as a Division I athlete. "

" The last book I read before I wrote my first book - 'Ghosts of Manhattan' - was 'The Gold Coast' by DeMille. I loved it, and it gave me a lot of energy to start into my own. "

Douglas Brunt

Start

Loved

" I've been pretty damn happy since 2001. More apparent danger than real danger for me, and even the apparent danger hasn't kept me from feeling warm, safe and loved. I've found love and a partner to raise three children that I'm glad to have brought into this beautiful world. "

" It's much easier to get disgusted when you've already banked 20 million bucks. "

" When the kids are down, I have a drink and watch 'The Kelly File.' "

" A theme I'm obsessed with is the tension between human nature and the frameworks designed to curb the worst and promote the best of it. "

" New York is big, fast, energetic, and has the most and best of everything. While it can push the senses, it's the most convenient place to live. It's much easier for a ninety year old to live in New York City than in the suburbs. NYC is the best mass assisted-living facility on the planet. "

" Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful. "

" It's common knowledge that professional athletes earn extraordinary incomes. What is less known or understood is how the advent of these riches has seeped into the conscious and unconscious ways in which our society now parents children. "

" D.C. is a small town with some big-town features. "

" 'The Means' is about power. I have access to political insiders who helped me write a portrait of the real day-to-day in politics, which turned out to be crazier than Wall Street. "

" A tennis racket lurks in my earliest memories like a sick relative who had come to live with us. When I look at my baby pictures, there it is, resting in my crib in the place of a rattle or chew toy. "

" Don't write more than 3 hours at a time. I write three hours in the morning, 9 A.M. - 12 P.M. Other people are best late at night. "

" With tennis, if you're very good at a young age, you don't even go to your prom. You're down at some tennis academy in Florida where you're on the court 8 hours a day. It's brutal. "