“It was just the greatest feeling to see a kid with your shoes on.”

I wish there was a season where I was playing and didn’t have no aches, no pains, no bruises, no nothing.

I don’t really care too much about what people who don’t care about me say about me, but a lot of times, you know, I get tired of defending myself.

Larry Brown molded me into an MVP and a Hall of Fame player.

It was a blessing just to play one NBA basketball game.

Guys is supposed to be able to be original and dress like how they want to dress. The NBA can’t dress no grown man.

You gotta do what you gotta do. And I had to figure that out, and I used to – I couldn’t stand the media, but I realized they have a job. They gotta do what they have to do.

I can’t take it back. I can’t take anything back. So I don’t regret it.

I felt like I was better at football than I am in basketball.

I think a lot of times, when people who get a chance to meet me and be around me, they understand that I’m not the person that the media make me out to be.

I just feel this is my planet.

I couldn’t have accomplished the things in my career if I didn’t practice, and the worst part about that whole thing is when a kid comes up to me and says ‘Allen, I don’t like practice, either.’ I’ve got to straighten that kid right then.

I didn’t take constructive criticism the way I should have. When I finally caught up to that, that’s when I went to being the MVP.

Just because you put a guy in a tuxedo doesn’t make him a good guy.

I want to play basketball so bad.

I don’t have any problems with what these guys wear because they got their own style and their own originality. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, man.

Tattoos, cornrows, headbands, hip-hop. I never meant to start any trends. I got my butt kicked, but if that meant that the guys who came after me could be themselves, then it was worth it.

A viewer as opposed to a filmmaker might see a film differently. But I’m extremely comfortable with my style.

I’ve seen high and lows. When things go well that doesn’t make me feel like some genius. Nor will I allow the next disappointment to make me feel like a complete failure.

I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It’s such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don’t want to be a sex symbol.

You’re basically the sum of all the experiences you’ve ever had, and they’re sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies.

Painting can feign reality without having seen it.

I see myself as a climber and an activist.

If youre a singer, you do concerts, and you get that interaction with fans and see what cities in what part of the world come out to see you.

If you see the teeth of the lion, do not think that the lion is smiling at you.