I get people to this day - I won my title 25 years ago - saying how wonderful a time they had during that dark period in our history when they came to watch me fight.

Every fighter has a story that could break your heart. We lose, we get hurt and everything comes apart. That's when it's so difficult to stay on the straight and narrow.

Work hard, think fast and you'll last.

A pit bull is like a fighter. Every so often it needs to taste blood.

I don't want to sound obnoxious, but I like to think I brought it another step. I was able to bring people who were casually interested in boxing together.

If somebody had told me in the 1980s that Gerry Adams would shake hands with Ian Paisley or Peter Robinson I would have said put that man in a white suit and lock him up in a padded cell.

What I would say about Barney Eastwood is that when our relationship worked, it worked extremely well. He had a lot of strengths as a promoter and a manager.

I'd had 35 professional fights and mentally I was tired of it. I'd sort ot fallen out of love with the sport.

Boxing is changing and training methods are slowly being dragged into the 21st century.

I wanted to bring people together, and most importantly not feel threatened when they came to watch me box.

I've spent my life navigating through sensitive issues. Not wanting to upset people.

True love does not put a person in a cage like a bird. It gives true freedom to soar.

A shrub that bears fruit deserves to be watered more than a tree that does not.

Regardless of whether luck or coincidence is involved, desires directed in the right way have a tendency to manifest.

For what was living with a man if it wasn't living inside his insanity?

The Algerians were revolutionsists, they wanted land. France offered to let them be integrated into France. They told France, to hell with Fance, they wanted some land, not some France.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

New York has given me a lot, but I still don't consider it home.

You know the old saying kill him with kindness that's the way you shut me up. With a compliment, I have nothing to prove.

There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.

There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.