My whole career, the ups, the downs, the victories, the defeats, the lessons I've learned and kept rolling, that's what's made me the fighter I am today.
I had studied Irish history. I had read speeches from the dock. I had tried to fuse the vivid past of my nation with the lost spaces of my childhood. I had learned the battles, the ballads, the defeats. It never occurred to me that eventually the power and insistence of a national tradition would offer me only a new way of not belonging.
There is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It's the intense effort, the giving of everything you've got. It's really a very pleasant sensation.
I am powered by the defeat in Sochi, as I am by all my defeats.
Sometimes when you make mistakes at big clubs you get punished. With Arsenal, people always seem to blame the defence for defeats. But I feel really safe behind them.
Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or of an elite, was once a child. He was once small. A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably. His triumphs will be measured against this smallness; his defeats will substantiate it.
In Italy, after a few defeats, it's quite common for the team to have to stay at the training ground for a few days, rather than go home.
I'm very grateful to God for what he gives me. Victories, remarkable victories, but you have to go through the defeats. That is why I praise God for everything.
My family is important to me. They have always been close to me during my career, victories and defeats, and the most difficult moments.
We exalted that Michael Phelps-consecrated water. Rose petals were strewn in Peyton Manning's path when he retired. But hey, that's natural. As we should, we admire those in any craft, no less so in sports, who appear out of nowhere to achieve remarkable feats.
