I want to improve every season, every training session. I'll continue that until I finish my career.

I am a bit boring.

I don't really go out. I stay in and watch TV.

It's everyone's dream to play for their country.

You will get criticised, you will get praised - that's the way football goes. I've learned over a few years now that it can change within an instant.

You give everything; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you always have to move on quickly.

There are a lot of players that want to go to the World Cup, so you have to be the player that goes out and performs and shows how much you want to go.

At Sunderland, if I had a bad game, it wasn't like it was the end of the world.

I suppose when people are criticising you and saying that you are not really worthy of going to such a club as Liverpool, it gives you a little bit more drive and more desire to prove them wrong. And that can only help you in the long run: make you a little bit tougher mentally.

The physical part of football has always been a massive part of my game so I can cover the ground during games.

The way we play at Liverpool is with high-intensity football, pressing high up the pitch, winning the ball back quickly, and counter-pressing.

I tend to focus on core work most of all in the gym.

I would say I am more comfortable in the centre of midfield. But when you are at a big club like Liverpool, you maybe get played in positions with which you might not be so familiar. But you have got to learn the different roles, because it gives you a better opportunity to play.

You have got to get to know people, and moving down to Liverpool from the North East was a huge change for me. But, at the same time, you have just got to get on with it, and that is part and parcel of being a footballer.

When you are very young and come through at a club, like I did at Sunderland, I suppose people do not expect as much and have not really heard much about you. Whereas, when you sign for a club, the expectations are higher.

It's important everyone knows their roles individually and collectively as a group.

Real Madrid are a team of winners.

You never know what will happen in football.

In club football, Jurgen very much does everything, and we follow. We listen, and we follow him.

Spain are a fantastic team and fantastic squad of players.

When you play for Liverpool, there's always pressure, pressure to perform, expectation. Of course, that's the reason why you want to go there.

I have always wanted to fight no matter what position I am in, and whether that is Liverpool or England, I need to do more, and I need to do better because you have younger players, or players get signed for the club who push you and want to take your place, and you have to be better than them.

You need people who are vocal on the pitch to give information at different times of the game.

When I finish my career, I can look back and then decide if it was good or not.

I always say, whether it's Liverpool or England, it's not just me who is a leader.

You can't keep having the pressure on your goal all of the time because, eventually, a team will get through.

I have been in tournaments before where people would say, 'England should win this game,' and we didn't.

People have to fear England and not want to play us. The only way of doing that is to play at a high tempo and win games.

Football is a lot to do with mentality.

It was football for me always.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

Don't compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don't like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they're 95 percent dead wood.

I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'

Don't lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell.

If you don't stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards.

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth... That's the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

It's in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It's not in happiness. It's not in impulsive pleasure.

There's a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are compassionate and polite. And agreeable people get paid less than disagreeable people for the same job. Women are more agreeable than men.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don't want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

It's very hard to find your own words - and you don't actually exist until you have your own words.

Don't be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

When you start to realise how much of what you've constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

Part of the core information that I've been purveying is that identity politics is a sick game. You don't play racial, ethnic, and gender identity games. The Left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let's say, and the Right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride. I think they're equally dangerous.

No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life.

Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don't mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That's not power. That's just corruption.

I've studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they're started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory.

Power is competence.