“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.”

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.

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.

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.

There is nothing like wealth for dulling desire.

You can find examples of how little we value ourselves everywhere you look. The signs on the front of the convenience stores where Stephen lives in Florida tell the story. Beer, ice, bread and milk are the big come-ons.

Every film I have made has corresponded to a very special moment of my life. I like to think that if someone wanted to reconstruct the story of my life, they can just see my movies and know what I have been through.

The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?

There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though – ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature – and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away.

If I can tell someone a story that makes them bend over and laugh, that’s bigger than anything else.

The fundamental difference between the mystery story and the ghost story is the fact that a mystery demands a solution for its effectiveness; a ghost story is necessarily unsolvable; the reader must be willing to accept the fact that nothing is proved.

Filmmakers tell stories to explore human nature, which is always a flawed thing.

As an actor, to be part of that story’s [Marvel univerce ] terrific. I’ve enjoyed it so much as a fan and now I’m getting to have a go myself.