Love Quote by Bill Toomey

Toomey’s line reads like a locker-room truth that survives because it’s less sentimental than it sounds. “Requirements” is the tell. He’s not talking about dreamy motivation posters; he’s talking about entry fees: the daily grind, the boredom, the repetition, the injuries, the unglamorous parts that separate wanting a thing from living it. By framing love as the first requirement, he flips the usual order. We tend to treat passion as a reward that arrives after competence. Toomey insists it’s the fuel you need before the work gets you anything back.

The subtext is especially athletic: talent is common, desire is cheap, and goals are fragile once the body or the clock pushes back. In decathlon terms (Toomey won Olympic gold in 1968), you’re not just chasing one event you naturally like. You’re committing to ten, including the ones that make you feel clumsy and exposed. “Love” here can’t mean constant pleasure; it has to mean a durable attachment to the process and to the identity of being the person who keeps showing up.

Context matters. Coming out of an era that mythologized grit and American self-making, Toomey’s version isn’t “work harder.” It’s “choose smarter.” If you don’t genuinely care about the pursuit itself, the inevitable suffering reads as exploitation. If you do, the suffering becomes intelligible - even, in its own way, worth it.