“Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.”

When you absolutely love what you do, everything just flows.

The more centuries that I am able to score, the happier I will be.

The bat is not a toy, it’s a weapon. It gives me everything in life, which helps me to do everything on the field.

Remember who you are and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

In the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn’t or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past.

Self-belief and hard work will always earn you success.

I want to be relaxed in my personal life. I really don’t like to be hassled.

Real fun is in a real challenge.

I don’t really focus on these things – on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field – stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

People from North India are generally known to be aggressive and emotional.

In the end, it’s you who you have to answer to.

I always had a sense of discipline in me. However, there was a time when I couldn’t divide my time properly between off-field things and on-field assignments. The focus would be missing at times, and that would affect my preparation for matches. I managed to change that.

I don’t believe in signing anything and everything that comes my way. I leave it to my agency to help narrow them down for me, but I do research it myself before signing. The image of the brand and its ambassadors go hand in hand.

The first thing I look forward to when I am in Delhi is to spend some time with my family. It’s always lovely coming back here and playing in front of my own people. It’s just a special place.

I do not abuse players. I talk to myself; I abuse myself. It’s my way of letting off steam. I do it after every century; I do not do it always. I keep telling myself: ‘Improve, improve from the previous match, the previous shot. You can do it.’

To this day, one of my proudest achievements is captaining my country.

Success is achieved by people who deeply understand reality and know how to use it to get what they want. The converse is also true: idealists who are not well-grounded in reality create problems, not progress.

But when you really believe-in yourself, in your dream-you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No great achievement happens by luck.

I believed less is what I needed, what I tried to achieve; I thought less is more, better, the minimalistic beauty of life.

The greatest achievement is to outperform yourself.

Europe has always represented a major strategic opportunity to achieve our goal of creating and building an enduring global brand.

You can’t always get what you want.

Hustling is putting every minute and all your effort into achieving the goal at hand.