I want to elongate my cricketing career as a consistent player. I have personal goals I would like to achieve someday.

I was the one who took football off the back pages and put it on to page one.

I didn’t tell any of my friends that I wanted to be a comedian, because I was superstitious. I thought if I told people, it wouldn’t happen. So I kept it all in my head for years and years.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

I know a lot of people say they always believed they could get into F1, but I didn’t quite believe that, certainly not when I was 7 and maybe not until I was 14. It was always so far away.

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

Thanks to my fans that have been with me from the beginning, I was able to sell out arenas on my own.

The worst thing is for a player to come to a club and not be able to play.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.

I support Real Madrid. I’m a big fan of Cristiano Ronaldo.

I plan on taking athletics as far as I can.

At the start of the season, there are 16 teams in the top division looking behind them, making sure they avoid relegation. The fear starts in the boardroom, comes down to managers and through to players. The fans sense it.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

The more minutes you play and the more grind and physical play you endure through the course of a season, you have to re-charge and get your body right for the next season. Be in that weight room and conditioning and that kind of deal.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

All I ever wanted to do with my life was own a little house. I did that way back with ‚Rocky,‘ so now everything I do is just icing on the cake.

Be a player; don’t play yourself. And don’t play basketball. That’s not your sport, Jeb Bush.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of gold. The Greeks said, ‚You’re better than the Cassius of old.‘

The joy of doing well as a batsman for your country is much more than that little joy of going for a party and enjoying music. It is a completely different high, and I get high by performances. That’s what I enjoy now.

As a kid, we would drive up and down 77 North – that’s our highway – there would be office buildings on the side of the highway and I’d be like, that’s what my house is going to look like when I get older. I’m going to start making my house look like this.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

If you ask people what they’ve always wanted to do, most people haven’t done it. That breaks my heart.

I have two Golden Boot awards at home. It would be nice to win another, but I wouldn’t mind it if I didn’t.

Most home teams have chapels, so when I’m on the road I’ll probably go to their services.

I’m sure everyone knows now that only a few have performed in Madison Square Garden. That list is so small. Now I’m on that list. I’m a part of a very small group, which is unbelievable. You relish in that moment for a second.

Winning the title in England is the biggest challenge of them all.

Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting then being one.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Success is the child of audacity.

There are two bowlers who I think are very tough to play against – Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.

What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt.

The great thing about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become something remarkable.

Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

I saw MotoGP on TV first, before I saw F1 and other types of car racing. It’s what I got more into. It was cool, there was good, exciting racing.

My game is really played above time. I don’t say that like I’m saying I’m ahead of my time. I’m saying, like, if I’m on the court and I throw a pass, the ball that I’ve thrown will lead my teammate right where he needs to go, before he even knows that that’s the right place to go to.

If a great opportunity opens itself up, I would love to be involved… or star in a movie.

My priority is cricket. Everything that I get apart from it is a result of the effort on the field. Everything else follows. I am pretty aware of my priorities, and I don’t really focus on things that are not as important to me as cricket.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

I always wanted to be a Vine star. I wasn’t, thank God.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

What is Champions League level? I saw a lot of rubbish games at Champions League level.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

Each book I’ve done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.

On the summit of Everest, I had a feeling of great satisfaction to be first there.

And winning is a huge thing for me.

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

To share the dressing room of club and country with Bhai was an amazing experience. I learnt a lot from him and other senior players like Renedy Singh.