“I look coolly in to the blue eyes of the person who is now my greatest opponent, the person who would keep me alive at his own expense. And I promise myself I will defeat his plan.”

“I would suggest that his next opponents don't look to me for advice”

“In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”

“Once in a blue moon a captain imposes his influence not just upon his opponents, but on a generation of cricketers, by the sheer force of his personality.”

“I keep waking up all by myself,
With a blue jay in my brain.
Flappin' his wings, making me sing,
it was just about to rain.”

“Adrian stood there leaning against the doorframe, watching me with his heart in his eyes. In my chest, my own heart was breaking. On my cheek, the lily reminded me who I was.”

“For God, who lives above the skies,
Would look with vengeance in his eyes
If I should ever dare despise
My mother.”

“I'm not the person who looks back or looks forward. I try to live in what is now.”

“Oh my god. I just hung around with an unpretty person. Excuse me while I go home to scrub myself with expensive body wash and a pink loofah, to rid myself of the unpretty germs.”

“I don't know that person anymore, that guy in '86, '87. I don't know that guy no more. I don't have no affinity for that guy no more. I have no affinity for the guy who said, 'I am the greatest fighter God produced.' I have no affinity for the guy who said he would try to push his [opponent's] nose bone up into his brain. I just don't know that guy. I don't know who he is. I don't know where he came from. I don't have no kind of connection with him no more.”