The hardest thing I've had to overcome was being from my small coal-mining town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. My mother was a coal miner for nineteen years, and the expectations of making it out of my town were slim to none.

There are a lot of black men doing really well, taking care of their families, taking care of their wives, being successful, doing the right thing, promoting the right thing. There needs to be an evolution in our portrayal. We have to come together, pool our resources and tell our own stories. People won't respect us unless we make them.

When you see a black guy on TV, he's always a thug or always portrayed as someone that's in trouble. It spreads the message to everyone else that that's who we are. People often don't try to understand black men as a whole. We're creative, strong and influential.

When I'm 75 years old, I want to say that I chased my dream. I didn't let other people's opinions dictate what I have in my book of my life.

Everybody dismissed athletes as being purely physical, but when you retire, you go from such an intense brain time - study of defense, audibles, hand signals, plays, adjustments - to a level of mental inactivity that's hard to comprehend. It's a big reason why I stay so active. Creating, evolving.

I feel like there's no such thing as failure. When something doesn't go the way I want it to, I learn from it, and I accomplish more than I initially expected to.

You're whatever you think you are. People like to compartmentalize other people. I don't worry about what other people think. I'm not living for them.