“The English game is not faster than the German game.”

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

I love pets, especially dogs.

I’ve thought sometimes about what I like about football, and it’s playing together.

My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes. Central midfield is Shinji’s best role.

The emotion to handle the pressure is one of the biggest challenges in football – it’s the top challenge.

I have only one understanding of development and of making success, and that’s by going step by step.

The city gave us a goodbye party, and it lasted a week.

When you create circumstances together, when you try everything, then you can lose. But you need to show the importance.

You’d be waiting 30 or 40 years for me to build a table. I have more than two left hands.

My biggest skill is common sense. I understand life.

We all started playing football against our best friends, and I can’t remember a moment where, because it was my best friend, I did not want to win against him.

Only one can win, and all the others are disappointed and live in the middle of disaster.

Often, you are forced to keep things simpl

Only stupid people are changed by success.

I was a fighting machine with a will of iron.

The Premier League is one of the most difficult in the world. There’s five, six, or seven clubs that can be the champions.

What is translated from English and into English – and in what quantities – is a question of power.

Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.

We’re not savages. We’re English.

The most powerful words in English are, ‘Tell me a story.’

I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.

I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, “What did they teach you?” And she said, “They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room.”

As far as getting work, no one thought I spoke English. It was absolutely ridiculous. I’d show up at a meeting and they’d be like, ‘Oh my God, you speak English! That’s so cool.’ They didn’t really know what to do with me.