All the trials and tribulations have paid off. In life, you have setbacks...When you're in your valley, that's when you're tested the most -not when you're at your peak.

If I go as hard as I can in practice, make sure it's a lot harder than than a fight, then the fight's going to be easy.

We are all fighters, every single person who walks this earth is a fighter, everything that lives. To live is to fight. And we just fight in different arenas.

It's about feeling alive in the moment because your adrenaline is going, your thinking about that present moment, you're not somewhere else, you're not thinking about what's going to happen 10 minutes from now, and that's the reason why I love fighting, it's when I'm in there. I feel free, I feel like there's no other place I want t be. I can't even think of anything beyond that second. That's why I'm drawn to the fight, because I love the presence of it, where it brings me mentally, it's the purest thing for me.

As an athlete you have to be coachable. And being coachable is a humbling thing.

You never know yourself until the chips are down. True strength is not measured when your at your strongest, but when you’re at your weakest.

I'm a UFC fighter, a macho-type sport. I am a heterosexual guy in a tough macho sport, which is exactly the reason I feel a duty to say I support gay marriage and gay rights. I have nothing to gain personally from supporting this issue, and that's the point. Society as a whole is better when there is equality, and I want to live in a country where everyone has the same rights because we all benefit from that.