I don't like the act of talking; it makes me slightly light-headed.

Humility was considered a great virtue in my family household. No show of complacency or self-satisfaction was ever tolerated. Patting yourself on the back was definitely not encouraged, and pleasure or pride would be punishable by death.

Pain is an event. It happens to you, and you deal with it in whatever way you can.

It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement.

Boxing is fascinating. It's good for the soul to be made to feel clumsy. I swank around during the week thinking I'm a big cheese, but you don't feel like that when you're in the ring with a chap who knows what he's doing. It's ritual humiliation. I'm going to be slugged about and probably killed, but I love it and have to do something to keep fit.

Happiness is the twinkle in your grandmother's eye as you reverse the tractor off her legs.

To be a head boy, you have to be very clever, you have to be a scholar, and I was never a scholar in any shape or form.