Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

It’s life isn’t it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

On the ‚Star,‘ you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.

Joe Frazier got hit more than me – and he doesn’t have Parkinson’s.

I’m much more comfortable and confident running out on the field in front of 70,000 people instead of standing in front of a camera trying to say some lines. The people who do that as a profession are very talented because it’s certainly not easy.

I used to play a lot of different sports. Now when I look back, I understand that it really helped with my hand-eye coordination.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you’re young, you can’t play enough.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

If you made me the national commissioner of football, I’d tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we’re going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.

I know my serve stinks, but I was a pretty good tennis player.

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

Most people don’t have time to master the very mathematical details of theoretical physics.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

We all knew this. We all knew that it would take more time than any of us want to dig ourselves out of this hole created by this economic crisis.

Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

I’m not going to lie; listen, I’m nice at basketball.

Liverpool is a club with a big, big, big history, and all the clubs in the world have a big history if the present is not too successful. If you have never had success, then nobody knows how it is, but in Liverpool, everybody knows how it was.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

If I said I would knock out Sonny Liston in 1 minute and 49 seconds of the first round, that would hurt the gate.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

I have always thought I was the best ever player.

I’m proud to play for Real Madrid because I have fun; when you no longer have fun it’s a sign that it’s time to leave. For now though, I’m happy here at the greatest club in the world.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

Wrestling is intimate. You can reach out and touch the wrestlers.

As an athlete, you’d better laugh at yourself when you slip in the mud.

I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.

I guess for every driver the aim is to beat their teammate.

I won at every level – all the way since I started playing the game of basketball at nine. I’ve won at every level, won championships at every level. And, you know, it won’t be fulfilled until I win at the highest level.

I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

I have a lot of friends who do what I do. Either they’re actresses or singers or things like that.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

I have never cared especially for outdoor sports and have no desire to excel at tennis, swimming, or golf. I’ll leave those things to the men.

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.

The Paralympic Games is about transforming our perception of the world.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

You know, I’m trying to chase rings, and that’s all I’m about. So that’s where the conversation stops for me.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

I left school to concentrate on racing. It was a family decision between my mum, dad and myself.

You never get over losses. I’ve never gotten over one loss I’ve had in my career. They always stick with me.

We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.

I don’t think a coach becomes the right coach until he wins a championship.

Better never than late.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

I do think coaches need to get away from the game more, though. It’s good for them.

I’ve been so blessed to play for the greatest coach at a time when our organization has done incredible things. I’ve played with the best teammates. Playing for Mr. Kraft and what his influence on the team has been.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.