I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I'm gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society.

I was very dedicated and serious about fighting. I'd read about all the fighters. I found out where they came from, knew about their mothers and their fathers . . . I just read all about their lives, their training.

I never look at a high point in my career. Everyone thinks about the Spinks fight, but that fight only lasted 91 seconds, so it's hard to say it defined my career.

I guess I'm going to fade into Bolivian.

To be successful in sports or business, you really have to live the lifestyle. Success is about lifestyle. Just because I was training and working hard, that didn't make me champion or a good fighter. My lifestyle made me a good fighter. In my mind and my daily life, I was the heavy weight champ when I was 15 or 14. I lived the life of the heavyweight champion, and that's who I became. And that is so much more than just training. So, when the time presented itself, that's who I already was. I was ready. I was already there.

I'll go back and take what the people owe me.

My objective was to hurt the other fighters. I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to be merciless. Man, I was a wild thing. It's kind of a drug, a rush.