“There’s one thing everyone should understand: I like my character.”

I’ll be the judge of my own manliness.

These people didn’t know anything about black people, so the only thing they could imagine was the worst thing.

I spent money, I slept with women around the league, but I always kept my mind on the game.

The life I was leading was changing me into someone I didn’t even know.

I’m going to come out and tell it like it is.

It’s all about what they can get out of me.

I didn’t want to be known as Madonna’s playboy, her boy toy.

When I hit bottom, I can attack the problem and get to where I want to be.

Shaq is not the man. He’s the man because the NBA wants him to be the man, but before you can be the man, you’ve got to be the man.

I don’t trust what this life has given me.

I’m just saying I’m being myself, and people understand that.

I lost $35,000 in less than a week at the Mirage in Las Vegas.

They say Elvis is dead. I say, no, you’re looking at him. Elvis isn’t dead; he just changed color.

Why should I try to make you believe the things I believe in?

It’s a different story because guess what, the kid is only 28 years old, 28. He’s not his dad, not his grandpa. He’s 28 years old.

I’m the basketball version of a gravedigger.

If you look at it, the corset is a very beautiful item, but when I put one on, I realized how little you could actually move.

I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.

I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths.

Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being black meant everything was stacked against me.

It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

The looks, the stares, the giggles . . . I wanted to show everybody that I could do better and also that I could read.