A girl can talk about my nose, my teeth or my accent - anything that gets a conversation going is fine with me. It is weird, though, the way women respond to my body. Maybe 50 percent respond positively right away, while another 25 or 30 percent need a while to adjust to my size and to realize that ordinarily my muscles are soft, just like anyone's, only bigger.

And now, of course this is another thing I didn't count on, that now as the governor of the state of California, I am selling California worldwide. You see that? Selling.

My definition of a sport is that it's a physical activity that involves competition. Since bodybuilders certainly train and then compete, we are certainly a sport.

One thing Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't is self-effacing. Everything has to be the biggest. His money, his muscles, his movies and his machines.

My whole life everyone always said 'it can't be done', 'you'll never do it', 'you will fail', 'no one has ever gone from Austria and become a Mr Universe, blah, blah, blah', or when I ran for governor people were sceptical. It was 'you're going to lose' and 'people don't take people from show-business seriously in politics'. So, I've heard all the 'it's impossible' thing but I didn't pay any attention because I believed that I could do it.

Sometimes you do know, in 'Commando' when I said 'I lied', I knew that it was going to be a funny line. I've never had a bad line.

I don't criticize myself; I criticize my body.