“Believing that no one is better than the other. You know I grew up in the South. My senior year there was a very big racial tension.”

When I feel good about myself, things start happening for myself. When you look up, you go up.

God, my parents, my wife. I don’t have a lot of friends, because I’m always moving around. I don’t drink, so I don’t hang out in bars. But they’ve been very big in my life. Because they have helped to encourage me.

My God given talent is my ability to stick with training longer than anybody else.

I wouldn’t change anything about my past, because it’s made me who I am today. You have to remember: You need to crack some eggs to make omelettes. And I did crack some eggs.

Success is just being happy. And I try so many different things. I do a lot of different things. Because I think God has helped me to love myself. I know who God is, and I love God.

If you dedicate yourself to something, you can achieve it. It’s simple, but it’s true, and your age is just an excuse.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don’t dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

If you train hard, you’ll not only be hard, you’ll be hard to beat.

One thing I’ve done in my life is train year-round to compete at anything, anything. I’ve got an invitation now to maybe be on the karate team for the Barcelona Olympics. I’m debating whether I want to do that. I just love to compete, and I want to win.

I always said I wanted to be a great athlete, ever since I was an overweight little kid. I just love competing in any kind of athletics.

MMA is my love.

I’m just not a guy that loves to eat. I love to work and love to work out. I think I go against all the nutritionists who say you need to do this or need to do that, so I’m one of the oddballs.

Coming from a small town it was tough to dream big. When I grew up in a small town in Georgia, my biggest dream was one day to be able to go to Atlanta.

I don’t worry about protein. I don’t worry about all that. I’m from old school. I grew up in south Georgia. They didn’t worry about cholesterol or protein. They went out and worked and lived a long time, so I don’t put a lot of worries in my mind.

Growing up, I started developing confidence in what I felt. My parents helped me to believe in myself. I wasn’t the best looking guy, I wasn’t the best athlete in the world, but they made me feel good about myself.

When I started out as a little kid, I didn’t say ‘I just want to run football.’ I wanted to be a great athlete.

I’m not messing around with nobody’s woman. If I want a woman I go get her – you know what I mean?

I don’t like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.

Artt Frank is my all-time favorite drummer. He always seems to know where I’m going.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?

In a way, it’s nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong.

[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.

Whatever I’d say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.