“Some guys like to talk. What’s the problem with that?”

I’ve been more content with just who I am.

If I continue to just get to the playoffs every year, I guess you could say I arrived, but right now I’m just trying to find my way.

You hear all these stories about, ‘There’s one in a million guys that make it to the NBA and stay there.’ To see people cheering for me and when they say my name, it’s just crazy. It’s still crazy to me.

I’ve learned what it feels like to lose, believe me. But I think, in the end, that is just going to make winning that much better.

Beautiful fans of Oklahoma City, I can’t say enough about you guys. All the support you give our team. The home-court advantage we have is the best I’ve ever seen. We disappoint you sometimes, but we try our best every single night to win for you guys. And we want to win a championship for you guys.

If it’s controversy out there, or if it’s some false stories out there, I want to clear it up. That’s just what I’m all about.

I want to go down as a winner.

Dad, it’s been an up-and-down road for all of us, but you’ve always been there supporting from afar, texting me Bible verses every single day, telling me you love me every single day. That builds me up and I thank you so much. I love you. I’m just glad you’re part of this journey with us.

Hopefully before I’m done, I can be on an Olympic team.

I fell so many times and got back up. I been through the toughest times with my family, but I’m still standing.

Last but not least my family. My brother Tony, I love you. Thank you for beating me up when I was a kid. I always wanted to follow in your footsteps.

I don’t watch a lot of other basketball away from the gym. But I do look at LeBron’s box score. I want to see how many points, rebounds and assists he had, and how he shot from the field.

When people are used to you doing something, they want you to stay in that lane.

Me as a person, I’m not the president of the NBPA (National Basketball Players Association). I don’t even know what to say. I’m not like this perfect, buttoned-up, suit-and-tie guy.

I want to be a champion.

All this stuff is kind of surreal to me – Ididn’t think I’d be in the league or none of that. It was making it to college. That’s about it.

Whatever success I’ve had, I always like to top it.

Like all being in love, as distinct from particular acts of loving, it is a first principle. So far from resulting from our knowledge and choice.

Tranquility is like quicksilver. The harder you grab for it, the less likely you will grasp it.

I was fortunate to have parents who understood the importance of exposing their kids to different sports, different cultures and different activities in order to discover what we liked and what we didn’t like. They didn’t push us, they just gave us many things to choose from.

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like.

Blind Willie Johnson is a pretty big vocal influence. He can be very harsh, like gargly, gruff vocals, but also just slip into some very delicate, vulnerable soft stuff. I like that combination.

That’s the thing about a folk tale: It is always addressing incredibly key issues about how you should live and what the right thing to do is, which is really what I’m the most interested in – like the questions that religion takes on.

And it was like a three-way negotiation between them. But we are going to enter an era where there’s a physical, powerful, vibrant progressive movement that will, I think, be able to exercise power in the same way as the right-wing and the right does.