I'd fight any of the top guys.

I'm always down for a battle. I was born down.

I love rematches.

I'm a professional; I've got to be on weight all the time. There's not excuses for that.

It's the fight game, and everyone loses. You win some, you lose some. You just try to get back up on the horse.

I've got my dreams. I want to be the best fighter on the planet.

I never wanted to be a fighter. This is what God said I'm going to do, and I'm happy with that.

I feel blessed by God.

I'm not going to underestimate any fighter.

There should be no tolerance for cheaters, especially in fighting.

Every fight is different.

I used to make $300 a week, struggling to put food on the table, but I have become one of the highest-paid fighters in the world. I feel that's destiny.

I've been fighting since I was a child, fighting to get out of my circumstances.

I'd be champ already if it wasn't for the cheaters.

I eat too much.

It's not my decision, what goes on with who gets a title shot. I mean, some people get their shots in two or three fights. They're pretty lucky. I wish I could be like them.

It's a dream of mine to be a mixed martial arts world champion.

I've been the best fighter in the world at kickboxing - they can't take that away from me - but when I started in MMA, I realized how great this sport is. It's the ultimate combat sport, and that's why I want to be the world's best at it.

That first loss in the UFC was a tough one. I hadn't fought in a year, and you start again, different organisation, different scenario, and it all plays into it.

You back me into a corner, I'm not going to lay down and die. I've been down that road too many years in my life.

Part of my gift as a fighter is being a human punching bag.

My sister is strong.

I've been given a platform with the UFC, so I might as well share my story.

People always say its an aggressive and bad sport and just like street fighting, but it's not the same thing. You go into work at the gym every day, and it takes away from being an aggressive person in public. You're training every day, and you're losing that aggression for the public.

The whole reason I fight is for my family. Everything I do is for them.

My hands aren't even that big.

You don't learn anything from quick knockouts. I learn more about myself from hard fights.

When I'm fighting, I'm trying to find a reaction. I try to make the guy move; I try to make him do things that I want him to do. If he likes moving a certain way, I try to set something up so I catch him if he moves that way.

I've fought the best in the world.

It's not that I don't enjoy fighting. I don't enjoy the circumstances around fighting.

Fighting has been a part of my life for my entire existence.

There is nothing wrong with fighting, but when you're fighting an uphill battle on an uneven playing field, that's what I don't like.

Havana, for all its smells, sweat, crumbling walls, isolation, and difficult history, is the most romantic city in the world.

The Pilgrims were unified by their religious zeal, but they couldn't fish, they didn't know how to hunt, and they were bad at farming. In fact, they never had a good harvest until they learned to fish cod and plow the waste in the ground as fertilizer.

The Negro League had some of the best players in history. Satchel Paige was probably one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball, and many believe catcher Josh Gibson was a better hitter than Babe Ruth.

Cheap fish has usually been caught in careless ways.

Baseball players are not specialists; they all have to do it all. That is why I, and many aficionados, dislike the American League's practice of replacing the pitcher with a designated hitter. This creates two players who do not have to do it all.

Paper is at the center of so many of the elements of the development of civilization.

The environmental movement does not always have to be about stopping things. It can be about fixing problems.

People motivated by fear do not act well.

Environmentalists aren't nearly sensitive enough to the fact that they are messing around with struggling people and their livelihoods. They forget that the fishermen are the people with the most immediate vested interest in having a healthy sea.

I'm interested in most everything.

I sometimes think there is nothing really to be said about a novel but 'read the book.' I have a jaundiced view of literary critics.

Let's face it: the 19th century really was the great age of the novel - Melville, Hawthorne, Tolstoy. These are the people I really admire.

I'm an urban person.

Things that become important to economies become ritualized and become deified. Because I'm Jewish, I always thought it was interesting that in Judaism, salt seals a bargain, particularly the covenant with God. Some people, when they bless bread, they dip it in salt. Same thing exists in Islam.

I always wanted to write a book about a common food that becomes a commercial commodity and therefore becomes economically important and therefore becomes politically important and culturally important. That whole process is very interesting to me. And salt seemed to me the best example of that, partly because it's universal.

I was a theatre major and started off as a playwright.

It's harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can be done.

I read pretty well in French and Spanish. I don't want to read a book written in French or Spanish in translation.