"I want to say thanks to the Chelsea fans because I have seen them very, very happy with me for joining Chelsea."

"When I retire, the only thing that concerns me is that no one can say that I was a bad team-mate or disrespectful or self-important."

"Football is a team sport and not an individual sport. We win as a team, and every individual is better if we are part of the team."

"You have to know what club you are playing for, or you just play for yourself. Every time I put on a Liverpool shirt, I know it is more than just a football game."

"Fitness is important, but the most important thing is how you adapt and the way you feel physically. To adapt to a new position. To try to change your game."

"Madrid is not as big as London, but it is true when you are coming from a big city like Madrid, nothing is going to surprise you, and I am very happy to move to a city like London. It is a big city, and you can do everything you want with the respect that the English people always have."

"It's not easy to come somewhere new and have to find your place. You might feel someone doesn't like you, or you might need to find new friends. It's not easy, and I don't like this kind of thing. It's not easy, so you want to protect the players who are alone."

"I didn't realise how my life was changing. When I was 17, 18, 20, I didn't realise how big football was and everything around football. How many people live for football and love football. I was a professional, but I was a supporter."

"I remember when I first came to Liverpool, Pepe Reina helped with everything, and he made it easy for me. When I was Atletico Madrid captain, I tried to help everyone. These are the basics in football: you need to create an atmosphere and try to create a group of friends. It's not easy, and it doesn't always happen, but you have to try."

"The biggest ambition in my career is still to win the European Cup. I want to have a picture of that to look at later; I want to have that medal. You can have a contract that is better than your friends, but no player looks back and says: 'I won more money.'"

"I was captain in Atletico at 19, playing in the same team as Demetrio Albertini, who won three Champions Leagues, and Sergi Barjuan from Barcelona, who had won everything, and they were 32, 33. I was a kid as captain, so I wasn't the real captain, just a kid learning from them."

"One of the reasons I chose to come to Liverpool was because of the mentality of the club. It's a working club and a working city. I don't know why, but I feel like one of the people here. They recognise me and wish me luck, but in Spain, they surround you and you can't do anything. I think they're happy with me here."

"I am a big fan of the Gallagher brothers. At Liverpool, they came a few times; they are friends of Steven Gerrard. It was nice to meet them. When I was in Spain, I couldn't speak English, so I couldn't understand the lyrics. When I came to England, I started studying music and trying to understand what my favourite songs said."

Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.

"Purpose without virtue is vanity."

"The writing is therapeutic for me, it's an introverted process, I'm really inside my head. It's a really obsessive process. The live show, though, is the opposite. It's an extroverted process. It pushes me to connect with people, and so it pulls me out of my head and just pulls me out of myself."

"When you become an adult you just make that transition and you're right... it's fun and exciting to be an adult and exciting to have independence, but once you're out from under the cover of your family's protection and love, you sort of have to take a step back and come to terms with the fact that you won't really ever have that again in the same way. You'll never be a kid again."

"A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past."

"How can we help President Obama?"

"Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away."

"I "think "that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened."

"I would not vote for the mayor. It's not just because he didn't invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes."

"I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba."

"Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour."

"Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism."

"I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action."

"The Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea helped us resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable blockade of the United States, the most powerful empire ever to exist."

"None of us has any personal interest above the interests of the country. Our country is more important than our careers."

"The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization."

"The people respect and believe in men who fulfill their duty."

"If you calculate 15 minutes a day to shave, that is 5,000 minutes a year spent shaving."

"Religious faith, like political belief, should be based on reasoning, on the development of thought and feelings. The two things are inseparable."

"There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy."

"The Arab population of Palestine are victims of genocidal actions; their lands are confiscated or deprived of water supplies in the semi-desert areas, and their homes are destroyed with heavy wrecking equipment."

"I was not the son of a worker or lacking in material or social resources for a relatively comfortable existence; I could say I miraculously escaped wealth."

"We have always been prepared to negotiate with the U.S. government everything that has to do with bilateral relations, on a basis of the strictest mutual respect for the sovereign rights of each country. We will never try to ask the government of the United States to change its economic and political system."

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity."

"There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same."

"Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation."

"Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China - the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war."

"I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement."

"Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

"At times, I've referred to Christ's miracles, and have said, 'Well, Christ multiplied the fish and the loaves to feed the people. That is precisely what we want to do with the Revolution and socialism.'"

"Even Gaddafi's adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enroll in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21."

"Following the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that."

"We do not exploit our dolphins for profit."

"What prevails in every corner of this globalized world is the real struggle of our species for its own survival."

"My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious."

"It doesn't sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants."

"I will never retire from politics, the revolution, or the ideas I have."