“I train very hard, either rowing on the cross trainer or running. Not only do you feel tired afterwards but it relaxes you, it completely clears the head. But to sort things out I also like to walk.”

I’ve spent my life navigating through sensitive issues. Not wanting to upset people.

I don’t want to sound obnoxious, but I like to think I brought it another step. I was able to bring people who were casually interested in boxing together.

Boxing is changing and training methods are slowly being dragged into the 21st century.

Work hard, think fast and you’ll last.

What I would say about Barney Eastwood is that when our relationship worked, it worked extremely well. He had a lot of strengths as a promoter and a manager.

A pit bull is like a fighter. Every so often it needs to taste blood.

I’d had 35 professional fights and mentally I was tired of it. I’d sort ot fallen out of love with the sport.

Every fighter has a story that could break your heart. We lose, we get hurt and everything comes apart. That’s when it’s so difficult to stay on the straight and narrow.

The trouble with boxing is that too often it ends in sadness.

If somebody had told me in the 1980s that Gerry Adams would shake hands with Ian Paisley or Peter Robinson I would have said put that man in a white suit and lock him up in a padded cell.

I get people to this day – I won my title 25 years ago – saying how wonderful a time they had during that dark period in our history when they came to watch me fight.

I wanted to bring people together, and most importantly not feel threatened when they came to watch me box.

There is nothing like wealth for dulling desire.

(On the 1,500 meters) We went pretty slowly. It was a nice final lap for everyone.

The single most important aspect of coaching is running effective practices

You don’t want to pick a fight with just the guy at the deli, [you want to] pick a fight somewhere in the world and just run towards it. Run because the fight is going to go on without you if you miss it.

This year we plan to run and shoot. Next season we hope to run and score.

In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not keep the world from what it wants.

The reason I really started running was for meditative purposes. I would pick some problem to have in my head while running.

I think the best way is to keep stressing, that, as we build out a new energy system, one of the best things about it, if we do it right, will be that it will be more local, more democratic, more distributed, and, in the long run, much more economically sensible.

If I run into someone on the street, that’s one thing. But answering mail for a living? I like a job where you can play and act kind of goofy and have some fun.