“I don’t believe in signing anything and everything that comes my way. I leave it to my agency to help narrow them down for me, but I do research it myself before signing. The image of the brand and its ambassadors go hand in hand.”

I am very happy playing and showing off my talent on the cricket field and have no plans to enter Bollywood.

Whatever you want to do, do with full passion and work really hard towards it. Don’t look anywhere else. There will be a few distractions, but if you can be true to yourself, you will be successful for sure.

I support Real Madrid. I’m a big fan of Cristiano Ronaldo.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

No cricket team in the world depends on one or two players. The team always plays to win.

I’ve had a fan who made a painting of my face with her fingers. I have put it up in my room. It was sweet and very different.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

One of us wins, all of us win. Am I right?

I do believe in God. But you won’t find me visiting temples every now and then. I believe in self-realization. Peace of mind matters a lot to me. What’s the point in doing something just for the sake of it? I’d rather do something I like doing as long as I’m being true to myself.

I don’t think there is anything wrong in earning money from the sport you love. If you work hard and get benefits from it, there is no harm. The day you feel that you are not working hard and are only looking at the benefits, that’s where the problem is.

Work never stops.

I feel only my friends and family need to know what is happening in my personal life.

Border’ was the first movie that I watched on the big screen. It always takes me back to my childhood.

As a sportsperson, the best thing is people recognising you and loving you for what you do. For me, glamour is 100 people in the hotel feeling happy to see you.

I’m an artist. Artists don’t need permission to work. Regardless of whether I’m acting or not, I write. I write when I’m tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.

The last thing my dad said to me before he passed away was, ‘I know you’re gonna be OK. I’m not worried about you’.

Only you and you alone can change your situation. Don’t blame it on anything or anyone.

I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution.

Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.