Working abroad made me better.

It's not just about talent. It's about having players with good mentality.

If you are a club manager and things are going well, it's a great feeling because you've got the whole city behind you. If you're manager of your country and it's going well - and you've got a whole nation proud of you - I can't describe how that feels.

It's naive of anyone to think there is no corruption in football because it's everywhere.

I've never taken a bung, and I've never been approached to take one.

I have played international football myself.

If you ask any manager after a defeat, you want to be as far away from it as you can.

I've got the opportunity to manage a big football club, a seriously big football club, and I wasn't going to turn that down.

There's not many Premier League clubs as big as Sunderland, with their fanbase and stadium and facilities.

I won't tolerate players not giving everything they've got.

I shared a dressing room with Alan Shearer. I used to watch the opposition looking at him, and they'd be thinking they need to score more than one because Shearer is going to score, and he scores every game. That psychological advantage is fantastic.

When you're playing for Real Madrid, even when you're playing well, you're under scrutiny.

When I was playing, I always preferred to be meeting a side like the Faroe Isles or San Marino early doors. Do things right in those games, and you knew you would get six points on the board, at least be up and running and challenging in the group.

When you are in an international camp, you are together for 10 days. You eat three times a day together. You spend a lot of time in each other's company. That 10 days is very important ,and I think even times for training, times when you eat, meetings, this that and the other, a lot has got to change in that camp.

My dad was Dublin born and bred - a Dublin boy - but he always pushed me to play for what was Wales Under-15s in my day.

Because football is an emotional game, it's full of feeling, and that's why we try to train with a smile on our face. At the same time, we work very hard, but it's a fine line, and you've got to try and get that balance right if you can.

Since I was five or six years old, I just wanted to be a professional football player. I wanted to play against the best players. I wanted to play in big stadiums in front of big crowds, and I was desperate to play for my country one day, and thankfully, I was lucky enough that happened.

People talk about great motivators, but I think motivation has to come from within the individual first, because if you haven't got that inner strength yourself, and belief and you want to do well, it doesn't matter what anybody else says. You have to have that; it has to be inbuilt.

As long as my guys are out there and doing what I'm asking, and they're giving their best, I don't think anybody can ask for much more than that.

I think average players are able to play well now and again, or they'll play very, very well. Good players or great players, nine times out of ten, they have good games.

Of course training is very important, but resting is just as important. You have to get your recuperation, and I think all players make that mistake where they train hard but they don't rest enough, and even our school boy players, we tell them to get a lot of rest.

If you want to become a professional football player at any level, when you're growing up, you have to make sacrifices, and it's very difficult. It's not easy, but you have to train hard, you have to live right, and you have to rest.

Every time I manage Wales and you win, the feeling is better than I've ever had as a club manager.

I've been in football a long time and one thing you don't do is when things are going well, you don't get carried away. And when they don't, you stay positive.

When you talk about professional footballers, rightly or wrongly, people often already have an idea in their head about what they're like; they'll paint a picture before they've met them.

And if you don't believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.

The reason there's no modern-day Shakespeare is because he didn't have anything to do except sit in a room with a candle and think.

I think Freddie Mercury is probably the best of all time in terms of a rock voice. There was a vulnerability to it, his technical ability was amazing, and so much of his personality would come out through his voice. I'm not even a guy to buy Queen records, really, and I still think he's one of the best.

What's important is to get into shape and then not to have to worry about it. I don't want to get on stage and not being able to do something. Not being physically fit doesn't work for me.

The idea of telling the story of the Armenian genocide - or, really, any other genocide - and repeating those stories is really important. I also think it's important to always be exposing the warning signs for what was leading up to it. Those tend to always be the same.

What do you think Jesus would twitter, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone' or 'Has anyone seen Judas? He was here a minute ago.'

I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be.

At the end of the day it's the fans who make you who you are.

You sometimes get the feeling that people think getting back together after a hiatus to write and record a record is work, you know, arduous and unpleasant. Being able to write and record - that's a privilege. I don't forget the long days I spent working in a restaurant, when I wanted to be done so I could go home and work on a song.

I don't get in there and create a character. It's more of a voice that I hear living inside the music.

I never went to high school. I never really finished eighth grade. I was kicked out of seventh grade once and eighth grade twice. Mainly for not showing up and not doing it. Then I went to an alternative high school for part of what would have been ninth grade and part of what would have been 10th grade.

I think that one of the main privileges of what I do, which I am just starting to learn, is to have the ability to travel all over the world and experience different cultures.

My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.

That's the miracle of music. No one can reinterpret a Picasso, but a song can be remixed and covered and interpreted in an infinite number of ways. It's a living thing.

Being solo really lends itself to different interpretations - and everything is in the moment and on a whim. I never realised how far out you can go when you are by yourself.

One of the main dilemmas that's pretty common to a lot of people who are getting older is the idea that maybe there's a finish line and that maybe there's a time in your life when you start to slow down and stop and smell the roses and just kind of settle into what will be a comfortable period in your life.

There wasn't a key moment when I knew I wanted to quit.

Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.

I think there needs to be a global focus on people taking care of people.

'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.

I don't listen to Beyonce or Jennifer Hudson records.

You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly.

It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.

When I was eight, my piano teacher played seven or eight notes, and I sang them. She stopped and looked at me in shock! That was the first time I'd gotten that reaction. I'd had looks of horror, but never shock in a positive way.

If you wanna make money in music, you're better off being on the business end of it a lot of the time. And also as a musician, if you do make money, it means you had to bite and scratch and kick the whole way to not get ripped off, because at every corner, there's somebody there waiting to trip you up and take a bigger chunk.