“Reading allows me to recharge my batteries.”

If you don’t ask for the best, you don’t get it.

You get an image in the first couple of years of your career, and then whether you like it or not, you are stuck with it for the rest of your life.

Sachin Tendulkar is already a ‘Bharat Ratna’ for Indian people because of his phenomenal success and the manner in which he has served Indian cricket for years.

You don’t play for revenge, you play for respect & pride.

In a cricket career, your life is in some ways controlled for you. You have no control over schedules, you have no control about where you want to play, you don’t have control over that as a cricketer.

There are so many fans and so many people who care deeply about this game, and it is because of these fans that we are who we are as cricketers.

No dream is ever chased alone.

Playing in the same team as Sachin is a huge honour. His balance of mind, shrewd judgment, modesty and, above all, his technical brilliance make him my all-time hero. You can’t get a more complete cricketer than Sachin. He has everything that a cricketer needs to have.

I am what I am. I have not deliberately built an image for myself.

I was like every other boy in India, with a dream of playing for my country. Yet I could never have imagined a journey so long and so fulfilling. No dream is ever chased alone.

Cricket is just something that I am good at, just like various people are good at various things. What’s lucky is that cricket gets enormous publicity.

I am not the only intense or intellectual cricketer. I played with other cricketers who could be pretty intense and intellectual.

There is an element of mystique to radio, and I often listen to cricket commentary on radio, especially when one is stuck in a traffic jam.

Sometimes fitness is a good thing to have, but you have to recognise that fitness takes you only so far, and skills are the most important thing. Fitness just helps you execute those cricketing skills for longer and more consistently, maybe.

I was in the hockey team in school, played football. One of the challenges for me was to make the team feel better. It helped me evolve, so batting at different positions was never a problem.

I leave with sadness, but also with pride.

I think, team first. It allows me to succeed, it allows my team to succeed.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

Creativity allows people to be effective.

You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren’t allowed to be normal.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

Your steps are being ordered by the Lord. If He allowed it to happen, He’s going to bring good out of it.

Don’t allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily.