My passion is the wrestling.

When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were, like, $20 each.

If it weren't for the Internet, WWE probably wouldn't even know my name. If I had to rely on 'Pro Wrestling Illustrated' to get my name out there, it would have been a much more difficult road.

I really don't know life without wrestling.

With my history of concussions, the WWE wants to protect me, so I've had to take a lot of neurological testing.

People have said to me, 'It must be nice to prove so many people wrong,' but I've never really cared about proving anything to anybody else.

I always feel like I wasn't the best trainer, because I'm really good at teaching people stuff, but I'm not good if people aren't super psyched - if they're not like me.

I loved wrestling in Philly. It was such an exciting time in my life. That really helped me grow and think differently. It was also just a lot of fun.

Miz and I have known each other for a long time, and we really know, like, how to get at each other's nerves.

I will say this about the Miz: Even though I don't like his wrestling style, he is a very hard worker. I have a huge amount of respect for him, and I want him to do well.

I keep trying to convince people that I'm OK to wrestle, and I think that's probably the hard part. A lot of times I'm trying to convince myself, too, that I can wrestle. It's really hard, because the concussion issue is very subjective, and that's the part that a lot of people don't understand.

Wrestling is more of a creative outlet, and especially for somebody like me, I view it as my creative outlet. Not all WWE superstars and not all wrestlers view it that way, but that's how I view it, and that's one of the ways my mind works creatively.

I always think of it in terms of music. You're not always going to be a huge rock star in music, but musicians can play until the day they die. With sports, it's different. You can't always do it until the very end, and that's a hard reality of sports.

The blessings wrestling has given me have allowed me to find some new passions, but it's really hard when you've got that first love, and nothing really replaces it.

I feel like I'm not the greatest general manager in the history of general managers, but I do OK, and I'm learning as I go. I try to just do my best with it.

I think one of the things that really endeared me to people was that people got to view more aspects of my personality than most because of the different things that I did within WWE.

In combat sports, personalities are what draw.

I'm having a really hard time with this retirement thing and not having wrestling.

I think whatever you have in your life, my opinion is that if you know that there's something wrong, you try to fix it.

Smaller wrestlers are built for more exciting matches.

I like Everton. If I'm going to cheer for that kind of football team, I'm going to cheer for Everton. But the Seahawks are my passion.

A lot of people don't understand how hard the girls on 'Total Divas' work. They're on the road, the same as the rest of us, and then when they get home, they've got to be filming this whole time.

I love wrestling, and I love the entertainment aspect of wrestling, but the rest of my life, I just want to be able to live and enjoy my life. I don't want to be living it essentially for other people's entertainment.

Part of me wants to stay involved in wrestling, because I love it. But the thing I loved most about it was the wrestling part of it. I didn't get into it to be famous or to be a TV star: I got into it because I loved the act of wrestling.

I'm into environmental and ecological issues, so maybe that is an avenue to go down.

I'm a terrible actor. I would suck in films! The only way I would do well is if I was playing myself, which is what I did in my career.

I went from being a guy who was sparingly being used on television to being the World Heavyweight Champion and the focus of a lot of the storylines on Smackdown.

I have no problem with people eating meat. I would just like it, for the people who do eat meat, for the animals to be treated better. To be treated humanely. Cows in pastures living the life that they're supposed to live. I have no problem with that.

I like having a bunch of different experiences. I don't want to do just one thing for the rest of my life.

I love wrestling, but to wrestle just one style for the rest of my life seems like it would really hold me down creatively.

Wrestling is something that nothing else can replace for me.

WWE was an opportunity to wrestle in front of thousands - in 2013, I did 227 matches, and almost all of them were in front of more than three or four thousand people, with a high of 70,000 plus. It was an incredible experience to be part of that.

People who like hard-hitting wrestling and action, they'll like me.

I don't do really well in cities, which is crazy given that we're flying in and out of these major cities every week.

One of the autobiographies I really liked was Bob Dylan's. It was interesting because he didn't do it in a linear fashion.

I spent a lot of time over in England wrestling at Butlins holiday camps for Brian Dixon and All Star Wrestling.

I always try to live in the moment.

Wrestling is different to me. As I talk to other wrestlers, wrestling seems a little different to me than it does to a lot of them. To me, it's about an artistic performance and about honing my artistic performance in pursuit of these minute moments of perfection. These little encapsulations. And none of them are ever perfect.

I've always respected and appreciated Punk, but we never really hung out. We came from the same route, but we didn't necessarily hang out in the same circles. I've always had a great appreciation and respect for his hard work.

With ladder matches, you can't expect anything other than craziness.

I think of Bret Hart as somebody who held the Intercontinental championship like it was the World Heavyweight championship. Every title match he was in felt important, like it was the most important thing on the show. The way he carried himself and the matches he had, it was just everything I thought a champion should be.

The thing that I have to stay away from is sweets. I have a horrible sweet tooth. It's just the worst.

I didn't really grow up playing video games. I had an original Nintendo after the original Nintendo was cool.

My No. 1 dream match is Brock Lesnar. And I want that to be a WrestleMania match. I don't know if the WWE will ever let that happen, because they might be afraid he might legitimately hurt me pretty bad.

I'd like to to do a major pay-per-view match with Seth Rollins. I'd love do a major pay-per-view match with Stardust.

As you write about your life, there's a lot of things that you think about that you regret. It's interesting, because one of the things I regret the most is spending so much time focused on wrestling as opposed to focusing on my family.

I've always thought Shawn Michaels's story is fascinating.

I've been wrestling since I was 18 years old. And within the first five months of my wrestling career, I'd already had three concussions. And for years after that, I would get a concussion here and there, and it gets to the point that when you've been wrestling for 16 years, that adds up to a lot of concussions.

To me, the funnest part of wrestling is evolving. If you stay the same all the time, you're eventually going to be left behind.

Being a bad guy is fun for me.