“Keep in mind, I’m not allowed to be tough. I’m tamed.”

Stay out of the gentlemen’s clubs. Get a lot of rest. Just have fun and relax and stay focused.

I know how to turn the bad into good always.

If I was able to have the game I have and shoot 80% from the line, I’d probably be an arrogant person rather than a humble one.

No matter where they put people, no matter how they try to promote people, there aren’t too many people in the game today that are on my level on and off the court.

Being here feels like I’m out of prison. This is the right place, the right time, the right team.

Stats don’t matter. I care about winning, not stats. If I score 0 points and we win I’m happy. If I score 50, 60 points, break the records, and we lose.

As my great friend Aristotle said, ‘If you cannot command, you must learn to listen.’ I’m not the hierarchy here. I am a worker bee.

But that is the only thing that slows me down is the system. No one, two or three was big enough to slow me down, only the system. It was the system that slowed me down to make my numbers fall. Not because I am older.

I don’t get tired. I get beat up. You keep chopping on a tree, you need to give the tree some rest so the chlorophyll will fill back up and the tree gets its energy back.

Probably a lack of concentration. I always hit them during practice. I just need to concentrate. Even though I should a lousy percentage,

I’m ready to go. As big men in the league, there are two who have done something special during this millennium. I’m one and Tim Duncan is the other.

The biggest thing that will define my legacy is how I’ve done it, and what I’ve done, and who I am. I’m a weird big guy. Doing rapping, doing movies.

I don’t know who made it, all I know is it was put in my head that two plus two is four. So certain things happen. Why does it rain? Why am I so sexy? I don’t know.

Talk to the guys that ain’t doing nothing, don’t talk to me. I just want eight guys out there with me who want to play.

Because I grew up with a drill sergeant in my life,

Now that I’m an old, old veteran-age 29-I do things a lot differently. I don’t go to the gentlemen’s clubs anymore. I had to slow that down.

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don’t do it, and it won’t happen.

What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon.

Keeping us safe is really not my job; it’s the black guy’s [Obama’s] job. But I’ll tell you this: If I don’t finish in the top three for the next Nobel Peace Prize, something’s seriously wrong.

I want to have some stuff that I keep for myself, my friends, my family, my loved ones. That’s how I view.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

It’s a burden trying to keep a secret. It’s hard. It probably takes more out of you trying to hold it and keep it than it does for you to really let it out.

Tranquilizers work only if you follow the advice on the bottle – keep away from children.

Keeping a journal implies hope.