“In the end, you have to protect yourself at all times.”

Once I am in the square circle, I am in my home.

I am the best. There is nobody better than me.

A true champion will fight through anything.

If you fight angry, you make a lot of mistakes, and when you fight a sharp, witty fighter like me, you can’t make mistakes.

If I’m scared and I’m a coward, why do you guys want to see me fight?

I ain’t never nervous. Never nervous.

God only made one thing in this world that’s perfect – and that’s my boxing record.

I would lie in bed, and I was nine years old, and say to myself: ‘I want to be the richest man in the world.’ I’ve come a long way from there.

I’ve never had a job. I’ve never needed to.

Boxing is real easy. Life is much harder.

I just want to be the best. I haven’t been in an all-out war. That doesn’t mean I’m not the best.

Everywhere I go, I will make a good payday. But we got to choose the right opponent and the right time and the right venue.

I come from a very rough background, and I’m saying that if you work hard and dedicate yourself that you can make it, too.

I don’t have to fight if I don’t want to.

You can never overlook a guy.

Things happen for a reason, and the only thing you can do is at night time get on your knees and ask God for forgiveness for anything that you did that you didn’t feel was right.

Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains. When men find themselves forever barred from this delightful fruition, they are lost to all industry, and grow careless of all their worldly affairs. Thus they become bad subjects, bad relations, bad friends, and bad men.

I cannot start a story or chapter without knowing how it ends. Of course, it rarely ends that way.

Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?

My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?

My horizon’s have shrunk and I have only endings to write.

In the end, it’s the people who are curious who change the world.

Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.

There’re songs to make you smile, there’re songs to make you sad. But with a happy song to sing it never seems as bad.