There have been times in my adolescence where I gave up. I was like, 'I'm just never going to be pretty. I'm never going to be like one of those people on the front of magazines.' It always seemed really strange to me that the projection of how people are in advertisements looked nothing like the people who were actually buying them. You know what I mean? I never understood that mismatch, and now I really start to see that the people you see in the media are a lot more like people actually are.

I try not to get caught up on how cool I am. That way nothing ever gets done. I'm always thinking about what I haven't done.

For girls it raises your testosterone, so I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight actually. Not with like everybody, I don't put out like a Craigslist ad or anything, but if I got a steady I'm going to be like 'yo, fight time's coming up.

For me, MMA is like speed chess. It's like I'm herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an arm bar. I'm not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I'm going to do is convince you that it's a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go.

Sports Illustrated is very serious about their covers. They'll never say, like, 'Oh you got it.'

A belt does nothing but hold your gi together. A belt has assigned significance, a belt is someone else saying you're good, you don't need other people saying that you're good in order to be good.

Reality TV is set up to make people entertaining. A good person with values and principles is not good television.