On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.

For me personally, Elliott Carter was and remains one of the most meaningful composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries because he represents substance. He was the living proof of uncompromising, complex music, which at first seems inaccessible. But it becomes accessible if one digs in and sees the development through.

I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.

There are many wonderful orchestras in the world, but very few who have a character or personality of their own. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of them, and I think it very important to recognize and respect that character.

There is too much employer-employee relationship in America. I wish the musicians would feel that many decisions have to do with them and not delegate everything to management or to the board or to the committee. This is why you get a sense of pride in some of the European orchestras: because they are part of the decision-making.

For some reason, the fans got behind me, and I don't know exactly why that is. I wasn't supposed to main event WrestleMania XXX, but the fans were so vocal about it that the fans had no choice but to put me in the match. I've had a lot of lucky breaks.

I love sweets. Like, every week of my life, I've had a cheat day.

I was very good in school, and my parents really would have really liked me to go to college. Instead, I went on this random journey to go be a professional wrestler.

If you want to grow a beard like mine, the only thing I can tell you is that you have to have patience. You just have to let it grow.

Seeing your baby in pain and seeing them crying and that sort of thing, and you're tired, and you can do nothing about it - that's, like, one of the most demoralizing things I can think of.

The best parenting advice I actually got was from Shane McMahon. He was great with me when Brie was pregnant and all that. He said, 'When you have that baby, make sure you take care of Brie first.'

I would define the new aspects of fatherhood like this: It is 75 percent amazing and 25 percent demoralizing. I think any new parent can understand exactly what I'm talking about.

My biggest concern with the whole deal with 'Total Divas' and with WWE - and, you know, they want you to be engaged with social media and all this kind of stuff - I don't want to live my life to entertain other people.

Sometimes, things just fall into your lap, and that's pretty incredible.

My brain is - essentially, you take any college football player in the country, because I have had multiple, multiple concussions. I had 10 documented concussions, four post-concussion seizures and so, but, with that said, my brain is no worse than your average college football player's brain, right?

I get this anxiety in cities and places like that. When you grow up in kind of a small town and when you grow up around a lot of green and trees and nature and that sort of thing, sometimes I think it's a little mentally disconcerting to be around this concrete.

I don't want to live my life to entertain other people. I have other things that I'd like to do.

Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao was one of the worst boxing matches I've ever seen, but millions of people watched it because of the personalities involved.

My health is 100% more important than coming back to wrestling. Being a good father is more important than going out there and expounding on my belief that doing more hammerlocks in wrestling is good for the business!

William Regal has been the most influential person in my entire career.

I would read a lot about how to be a dad. I had never changed a diaper before we had Birdie.

My wife and I are very blessed. I am very grateful for the life that we lead.

One of the wonderful things about wrestling, to me, is that you can protect people who have had head injuries.

A lot of people thought you couldn't be a top-level athlete as a vegan, but people like Mac Danzig and Jake Shields are proving that's wrong. And it's better for me as a performer.

When I watch myself, I see nothing but faults, like, 'This I need to do different, this I need to do different,' and so if there comes a point in time where I'm like, 'Man, this whole thing is just getting really stale,' I am not opposed to being the bad guy again.

When I first got to WWE, the head of talent relations was John Laurinaitis, who is now my father-in-law, and the first thing I thought when I saw everything that he had to do is, I thought, 'I would never, in a million years, ever want that job. You could not pay me enough money to have that job.'

Every year, I say the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl. There's no doubt in my mind every single year. And you have to keep in mind this was well before the Seahawks were good. This was, like, 2-14, drafting-Rick-Mirer Seahawks. I would still be saying they were going to win the Super Bowl.

I used to be vegan. I'm not anymore, but I don't eat hardly any meat. But it's nice for me to go to a place like Chipotle where I can get some fresh veggies, some brown rice, some black beans, and all that kind of stuff.

I'm not somebody who is genetically gifted when it comes to facial hair.

My mind thinks in wrestling. As I'm thinking of things and my mind is being creative, it constantly keeps going back to wrestling. That's my inspiration, and to not be able to express that puts me in a spot where I almost don't know what to do with myself.

I've lifted weights ever since I was a teenager, but I started going more towards the Olympic weightlifting style, which is clean and jerk.

I think fans always want something new, but they want somebody who can deliver - to go out there and really entertain them and have good matches.

I have to look at my career as 'it was what it was,' but I do wish there was more of it.

What we do is entertainment. We entertain people. Sometimes we inspire people, but sometimes we are just a way to fill their time.

I like going to Japan where they treat it like a real sport. I like doing the entertainment stuff with the WWE. I really like doing the small venue stuff, like Ring of Honor, because everything is so intimate. There's different feelings and different experiences, and you have to be good at different things to do all of that.

Me, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Lyoto Machida, former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, all shared a two-bedroom apartment together.

I'm bigger now than when I was eating meat. My lifts in the gym are better. I'm in better shape.

My diet is very kale-heavy. It's so nutrient-dense. I stay away from fake processed stuff.

I'm pretty much friendly and compassionate to everybody. But not to people in the ring.

WWE doesn't owe us anything.

Sometimes there's cities where it's just hard to find healthy food. You just have to be prepared.

I loved playing football, but I hated the games because it's a lot of pressure. I just loved putting on the pads and hitting my friends.

If you watch dogs play, they run and they fight, but they don't fight to hurt each other. They just play. And that's been me my entire life.

You have to realize that a lot of life is just fortune and the ebbs of flows of what goes on.

I wasn't a great athlete.

That is one of the coolest things about WWE and wrestling in general. The fans have this very unique voice and this very unique power, and in no other sport and no other form of entertainment can the fans make their voices heard and it effect change.

I feel like a lot of fans would like to see me with the heavyweight championship.

With wrestling, you can't describe how that connection with an audience happens. I can't teach anybody how that happens. The bad things that have happened to me in WWE have made that connection stronger.

I'm definitely an underdog.

I would like to do something to help people and help the world.