“People like to blame others. I think a person should just look at their own situation, look around them, find out what they wish to do, and seek and go and do that. And that’s it.”

Even when I was a kid, everything I had was the best.

I’m focusing on me. I’m focusing on my family’s security, my family’s financial security, so that’s all I can do.

Why go through life if you’re not going to challenge yourself?

Posture for combat is so vital.

I want to be financially secure by the time I have kids.

At 155, I will be the same animal, an even better animal.

People think hard sparring will get you sharp. And you do get sharp in the gym. But anytime I’ve trained that way, I’ve actually been a little bit flatter in the fight. And the knockout shot hasn’t come. It’s almost because my training has been too hard.

I certainly would not like to end up in a tie-up with Ms. Rousey.

Everything I’ve been thinking, every vision, even down to every shot I throw, it just ends up here in reality.

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

We come bulletproof in Ireland. We’re reared tough, and we fight.

I’ve learned new footwork patterns that are very unusual. I’ve learned how to find a lower centre of gravity, and I’ve found more angles to throw shots.

I have the greatest job in the world. I get paid loads of cash for beating the crap out of people. And I’m very good at it.

I never got into training to be an All-Ireland boxing champ or to win a belt. At the start, I just got into it to learn how to defend myself when I got into situations.

I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp…Then I’d find another one.

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

All we have to do is find such strength within ourselves. Know how to develop it.

Every man needs to find a peak, a mountain top or a remote island of his own choosing that he reaches under his own power alone in his own good time.

Whoever is not made glorified by taqwa can find no glory.

If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere else.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.