Obviously, the basketball career doesn't last forever.

I was watching 'Space Jam' when I was a kid but that was pretty much the only thing I knew about the NBA.

At the end of my life, I just want to make sure I made a big difference in this world.

I'm working on my lower body, my explosiveness.

I don't watch college basketball.

You don't have to think, you just have to play hard on defense.

Goaltending, sometimes it's tough because you're in the air and you say, 'No, no. Don't take the ball.'

Once I got 13 or 14 years old, I started watching a lot of videos on YouTube and NBA.com and I started following the NBA ball.

When you know where you want to go, you're mentally tough.

I think when you're a very good defensive team - it's very rare a team wins a championship when you're not a very good defensive team.

First, I'm just trying to set screens for my teammates and then just be aggressive, make the right play.

I trust my teammates and their ability to be there when they have to be there. I'm going to be there when I have to be there for them.

The Defensive Player of the Year is the guy that makes his team better. Not only gets stats - it's the guy that also has an impact on his teammates and leadership.

I'm able to impact people's lives by the way I play, but there's so much more things I can do so there is no limit to what I can do.

I think when you're a very good defensive team you give yourself a chance every night, on the road, at home, it's a big factor and something to build on.

I always love to help the community, to interact with the kids, with the fans. It doesn't matter who I am on the court, to me it's important.

I'd take the Defensive Player of the Year any day over an All-Star selection. There's only one of these in the whole league every year.

Obviously I think offensively, spacing for me as a guy that puts a lot of pressure on the rim is going to make it harder on a defense. They're going to have to make tougher decisions, and space is going to be way more open for all the guards, too.

I don't care about that All-Star bonus, to be honest. It's just about my legacy.

It's a tremendous amount of fans in France that love basketball, that follow it every day even though the games are at like two or three in the morning.

This is basketball. It's All-Star and all that stuff. That's not what it's really about. It's about making a difference and impacting the kids and helping people in need. That's what it's about.

In the playoffs, it's not going to be pretty. There's going to be some games where you don't score. But are you going to take a charge for a teammate?

There are a lot of people that never thought I was going to be the guy that I am now. Now when I see them, it's fun to see how people are. I don't think they're being fake. I think now they just see me from a different eye.

Usually, I heal very fast.

When you have a coach that is a competitor, that wants to win more than anything else, it really carries over to the team.

I want to improve every part of my game.

I definitely want to be one of the best players in the history of the game. That's a good goal to have.

That's what it's all about at the end of the day. What can you do? What difference can you make in the world?

I haven't scratched the surface of what I can become offensively.

Like I always say, it's a five-on-five game.

In Europe and FIBA, the game is a little slower and the court is a little smaller.

Defense is the thing we can control and bring every night. But I want to be great on both ends.

Everyone sees me as a defensive-minded guy, but both sides of the court are important. If you want to win, you have to be good on both sides.

Some nights, you're tired. But I just like to go out there and help my team win and not let my team down. It's the least I can do.

I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.

I think my mother, more than anyone, knew the importance of inspiration. If it was occurring, you had to use it.

Once illness strikes, you realize there's not a lot of time for you to do what you really need to do. And there's no time like the present.

I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider.

For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust.

I think I've done a pretty fantastic job, but of course I want to sell millions of records.

I bemoan the fact that all my famous friends have places in St. Bart's and I have to go to Montauk.

You get to a certain age, and you feel the need to reward yourself just for existing.

I want to carve out a serious period of time to focus on the next opera without any distractions. And to do that you need money.

In the music business, to survive for so long, you have to be able to cut off from your emotions sometimes. And being a father, you're faced with that situation. I know that my father was, with me. I understand why he had to be distant, because to rip yourself away, time after time, is almost more devastating.

I came out of the closet very young, and I had to cut my teeth pretty fast.

I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player - I'm not.

I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.

The thing I hate most is false modesty. The artists who are, like, 'Oh, you know, I'm really not that good. Oh, I can't believe I'm here.' I find it vaguely sinister, even.

I've paid the price; I definitely have a reputation that precedes me, and there is a camp that plots my demise. But then again... it's funner that way.

I'm not born again, I'm not Kabbalah, God forbid, but I did have an experience hitting 30 that I needed to lean on something that assured me that everything is going to be okay. I had to regain a lot of my belief in fairy tales, in happy endings.