“The tragic incident of Luis Salom reminds us that our sport, our passion, is dangerous. We know it but, in a way, we don’t think about it.”

The most important thing is to have a good relationship with the bike you have to understand what she wants. I think of a motorcycle as a woman, and I know that sounds silly, but it’s true.

How do Ferrari know what I’m doing next year when I don’t know what I’m doing next week?

I feel 100% a Yamaha rider in my heart. I had a long career and raced with several factory bikes, but the highlight of my career is undoubtedly with Yamaha.

I am able to ride the bike and think clearly about strategy and tyres. I also have positive thinking. I am very constructively critical.

I have so much respect for my opponents; many of them watched the races as little children and were supporting me!

If I test the car for a year I can be quite competitive the next season.

In my opinion we are at the limit now, and 17 races is really too much. With all the testing that we do now, it means we’re always on the bike and it’s quite difficult.

You look at Moto3, the races are very exciting. Moto2 is fantastic, and then MotoGP is boring.

The great fights with your strongest rivals are always the biggest motivation. When you win easily it’s not the same taste.

Maybe if Graziano make another work or another sport I wouldn’t have had this passion to be a rider.

To win the Championship in the first year will be hard. We need time to become competitive and win races.

My approach to the races hasn’t changed in my 20-year career. If I have the chance to attack and to pass, I do it, trying to get the best possible result.

I have won on Honda and Yamaha so maybe it is interesting to win with a third team, Ducati, who are Italian.

I’m lucky because I don’t feel too much pressure – it’s only in the last hour before the race, and even then it’s good, positive pressure.

In 2009, I didn’t like that Yamaha signed such a young and competitive teammate [Jorge Lorenzo]. But now everything is different. We are more mature. Everyone knows his role and position. Things are clear.

I’m very happy because I won a lot. I’ve won races and lived in a world that just gave me joy, so I remember it very positively.

One thing I gained in my life is just the need for more Jesus in my life. You never come to a place in your walk with Jesus where you feel like you’ve had enough. That’s a dangerous feeling to have.

Delay always breeds danger.

Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

Science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent ‘carbon summer’.

Just in case you get pneumonia or die. The dangerous bits are always the last days of shooting.

Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.

When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

In America, I don’t know how much longer the environment is going to exist. I sort of strongly believe that we’re in danger.