“When you do something best in life, you don’t really want to give that up – and for me it’s tennis.”

I fear no one, but respect everyone.

Hopefully I can just have another terrible year with only the one Grand Slam and that will be just fine.

In the locker room I was getting impatient to get on the court, I had to warm up several times.

I think it’s very hard for coaches to work with me. They’ll no doubt have a good CV afterwards, but at the same time they’re under a lot of pressure.

One of my big, big strengths I think early on in my career was that I could learn very quickly. You wouldn’t have to tell me the things 10 times or 50 times until I would understand them. You would only have to tell me two or three times.

I always believe if you’re stuck in a hole and maybe things aren’t going well you will come out stronger. Everything in life is this way.

Once you find that peace, that place of peace and quiet, harmony and confidence, that’s when you start playing your best.

Once you reach a good level in tennis it fills you with a lot of motivation. I hope I can do it for a long time.

My wife doesn’t like Football but she watches it just for Messi.

Oh, my God, I don’t think any player can look forward to or expect to a career of so many Grand Slam wins or title wins or being so long at the top of the game.

I have to fit holidays around tournaments, particularly the grand slams, in Melbourne, Paris, London and New York.

For me, I’m in the driver’s seat; I’m No. 1 in the world. I’ve won the last couple of meetings, and I’ve won the big tournaments lately. Whoever comes, I’ll try to beat him. But it’s almost up to me to decide who’s my rival, isn’t it?

I don’t know how you can go through a four-hour match with Rafa and he never gets a time violation.

Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didnt even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually.

It’s not so simple to just stay in the moment and trust your game and your strength that you can turn it around.

I am a very positive thinker, and I think that is what helps me the most in difficult moments.

I will do my best to reduce the price of oil to expand the life span of oil at least for two decades or three decades.

I believe [the architecture firm] Herzog and de Meuron and our collaboration made the product the best it could be.

We don’t work like the best basketball player and the best musician and so on. Science is a collective effort.

Invest in basic research and recruit the best minds.

When they called me with the Nobel call from Secretary General of the Swedish Academy it was twenty minutes to six and he said well that was well hope I’m not disturbing you but I am the Secretary General of the Swedish Academy.

The best thing about Berlin was that I got to be surrounded by people who pursue their ideas for themselves.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

Where the sky begins, the horizon ends, despite the best intentions.