“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’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 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.

[H]istory is seen in a rear-view mirror while the future is the dark, foggy road ahead, filled with unknown trouble.

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.

I’m so shy now I wear sunglasses everywhere I go.

Iwas a sculptor.Butthat’sreallydrawinga drawing you fall over in the dark, a three-dimensional drawing.

The dark of my eyes, the fullness of my lips, and coal in my complexion.

With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.

An opportunity to honor the legacy of the lives drawn into the lines in my face, the broad of my nose.

O Hope! Dazzling, radiant Hope! What a change thou bringest to the hopeless; brightening the darkened paths, and cheering the lonely way.