I like the tag of being the world's most expensive player. It's an honour and a privilege.

Newcastle fans never cease to amaze me. If there was a trophy for best supporters this lot would win it hands down every year.

Basically, a manager is a father figure to 20 or 25 blokes. It's about trying to get the best out of them and creating team spirit.

If you ask footballers to pick out the player they most admire, so many of them will pick Paul Scholes.

My motto in life is 'if you give 100 per cent then no one can ask any more'.

I have always said that the best feeling in the world is scoring a goal. Don't tell my missus that, but it is. When that ball hits the back of the net, it is fantastic.

Defeat is not worth thinking about.

Football's not just about scoring goals - it's about winning.

I don't know what I'd have become if I hadn't been a footballer; I wrote down 'dustbin man' on a careers questionnaire at school till my dad made me change it to 'joiner'.

I've never wanted to leave. I'm here for the rest of my life, and hopefully after that as well.

If you want to have a great party at Wembley, don't invite the Germans.

Self-conciousness is the enemy of all creativity.

If you conform, you can never reform.

If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.

I am convinced that by eating biological foods it is possible to avoid a tumor.

If we learn not humility, we learn nothing.

Grace makes the promise and providence the payment.

The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living beneath them; or as the Italian proverb says, "The man that lives by hope, will die by despair.

Obviously, for the majority of parents and certainly me you gain a million worlds when you have a child. Certainly, it's the thing that's changed my life and made me unbelievably happy.

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

Computers have changed the world of chess.