My parents would definitely be my childhood heroes.
— J. J. Watt
A sack is way better than any nightclub. A touchdown is way better than any bar experience I've ever had.
There's no greater feeling in the world than when you can put a smile on somebody's face just by walking into a room. It's unbelievable. And if I have that power, who am I to waste it, you know?
One of the things I have to do, and I'm working on it, is making sure I enjoy the ride along the way. I have to remind myself, 'Take a look around, look at things, and enjoy it.'
If you're going to nap, make sure you have a proper chunk of time blocked out. I'm not one of these guys that does the 15-20 minute nap. I don't play those games. I'm, like, an hour minimum. I'm not gonna lay down unless I know I have at least an hour.
In Wisconsin, style-wise, it was all about bundling up, maybe wearing a hat and forgetting about your hair.
I obviously would love to have a girlfriend, but a girlfriend deserves so much of your time and energy. And she deserves to be treated like a princess because that's how you should treat your girls. And if I can't give them that time and that devotion because of my dedication to football, then I don't feel like I should almost waste their time.
My family is a middle-class family. When I grew up and learned how much it actually cost for us to play hockey, I could not believe that my parents let us play as long as they did.
If you don't have that vision for the end goal, you have no clue where you're going, and you're going to work very hard to go nowhere.
When it comes down to that moment, when it's me against you, you know in your head whether you worked hard enough. You can try to lie to yourself. You can try to tell yourself that you put in the time. But you know - and so do I.
Growing up, you'd see Michael Jordan on everything from Gatorade to shoes - everything. Obviously, that's something pretty cool for an athlete to aspire to.
I don't get bothered by fans.
I'm not ashamed of it, but people would think I'm ashamed of Bieber. I got Bieber on my iPod.
My goal is I want to create the 20-20-20 club: 20 sacks, 20 tackles for loss, 20 batted balls.
I want a girl who's passionate, driven - a girl who believes in herself.
I respect every guy that has walked away. I think every single guy in this league makes his own decision, and that's perfectly fine. The reason I respect that and the reason I think every guy has his own way of dealing with things is because, in my personal opinion, I know what I'm getting into.
There's plenty of days when I don't want to eat chicken breast and broccoli and rice, but I know what I have to do, and I know the sacrifice I have to make.
People always ask, 'Man, why don't you come out and enjoy it? Why don't you celebrate? Why don't you have any fun?' My fun is Sundays. Anybody can go to the club. You don't have to be good at going to the club to go to the club. You have to be good to be playing on Sundays, and to me, that's what's cool.
It's pretty neat to be able to help the team in different ways.
When you're in the National Football League, and you get this window where all eyes are on you, you can use that. You can use that platform for good.
I don't want to play forever. I want to give everything I can now and then walk away knowing I gave everything. The example I think of is Barry Sanders. He was such a great player, and he left when he was still on top. I want that to be me.
There's gonna be people that don't like you, regardless. But I take on the mentality of, 'Look, I'm gonna do whatever I want to do. If people don't like, they don't like it.'
Houston is kind of a melting pot. There are many different cultures and ethnicities represented out there, even on my team. It's really cool: you'll see so many different things.
I know that I have probably an eight- to 10-year window in this league, and if I want to be what I say I want to be, then I have to commit myself 100 percent.
Hockey, honestly, was my first love. The excitement, the fast pace, the intensity of the game... I still love it to this day.
The way I look at it is that somebody in the world, no matter what your field is - teacher, violinist, football player - has to be the best. Why not me?
If you're an outsider looking into my life, you're thinking, 'That dude is crazy. He's literally crazy.'
Obviously, you get to do a lot of great things and cool opportunities at the Super Bowl. But at the end of the day, we all want to be here as a player. That's the goal, and that's why I work so dang hard.
I'll fight a bear, but I don't like spiders. I'm not a fan of those.
I want to be the defensive player to break the MVP barrier. I want to break barriers. I want to do things when people tell me I can't.
Each year, I write out a goal sheet with what I expect. If I showed anybody else my goal sheet, they would have said I was crazy.
My schedule is so crazy.
People play with pain all the time.
It's literally, if I'm not working out, I eat the whole time I'm not working out. It's exhausting. You have to force-feed. You have to force yourself to eat food.
I live for Sundays. I live for Mondays. I live for Thursdays.
Football has been everything to me since I was 10 years old.
I will always do what I can to help others, but when I retire, I want to be a dad and a husband. I want a house and a dog in the yard. I want to have barbecues.
My dad was a firefighter for almost 30 years. My mom worked her way up from a secretary to vice president of her own company. They taught me to work hard for everything and take nothing for granted. That's how I play.
People like to see a guy being built up; they like to see a guy go from the bottom to the top, but then once you're on the top for a little bit, people wait to see you fail, and they want you to fail, so they find flaws and they find reasons, whether it's being too nice or trying to make you out to be fake - that's what they do.
I definitely care about what I look like, certainly when I am going out in public, doing an appearance or something, but when I'm home, I'm all sweatpants, all the time.
I love the Stanley Cup playoffs.
I grew up in Wisconsin loving hockey. I mean, I started when I was three years old on skates.
It's hard to understand the life that I live and rationalize some of the things that I do. I don't need someone questioning every move that I make, asking me why I don't just relax. When there's no one asking me those types of questions... to me, it's peaceful.
The one thing I know is, if I play good ball, things have tended to come along with it. Everything that I've ever done in my career has come off of playing good football. And so I realize I need to go out there, and I need to take care of my business; then everything else - all these cool, great things - come along with it.
I actually have no style whatsoever. I'm the worst. I have people I talk to, and I say, 'Please tell me how to dress because I don't know what I'm doing.' The biggest thing for me is my mom. I'm like, 'Mom, do I look good?' If she says yes, I'm good to go.
I ate a whole 20-inch pizza by myself one time.
Since my sophomore year in high school, I knew I didn't want to do anything but be a professional athlete. I knew when I got to college there was no way anybody was going to stop me from being an NFL player.
Basically, I want that relationship where we have that love. I love her so much, and she loves me so much that it's just - you want that relationship where you look into the girl's eyes, and you know that she's everything you've ever wanted. When I find that, I'm going to get it!
If there's ever any point in my life where I could meet Jennifer Aniston, I think that'd be pretty incredible!
I Googled 'What do rich people buy?' Because I don't feel like a rich person, and I don't really try to act like a rich person, so I don't know what they buy. I didn't really like the stuff I saw, so I'm gonna stick with my humble lifestyle and just keep working out.
