I've been semi-successful. I've done all right but I'm not the player I was. Who do I think will win the world championship? John Higgins. Have I been good for snooker? I don't know.

Looking for perfection is the only way to motivate yourself.

The most important thing, the biggest love of my life, is my snooker. Ive never been so emotionally ingrained in something - in a person, an object, anything - as I have in snooker.

The relentless pursuit of perfection has been my problem over the years. It's maybe held me back.

My dad's method in his madness was to try every sport and then observe what I liked. I played football, tennis, golf, cricket but I loved my snooker.

Today I got so annoyed with myself that I lost my patience and walked away from a game that, with hindsight, I should have continued [on quitting a game early on against Hendry]

I know what I want to do and there's no point giving my secrets away.

It's not an irrational decision, I've been thinking about this for quite a while and maybe it'll be good for me [on his career break

Running clears my mind, and gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

I thought 'How can I stop playing or give myself an excuse to stop playing? So I snapped my cue on Friday. It was quite fun doing it. It's gone.

I do entertain a lot of negative thoughts and I haven't got any self-belief. But I haven't done bad for someone without any self-belief.

There is a true weakness in American thought today: their incapacity to be interested in the intelligence of evil.

Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don't match how they really are.

I have a journalism degree, but I'd rather be the person who is being written about rather than the person who is writing.

A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.

...The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.

Skiing is the best way in the world to waste time.

Those who wish well towards their friends disdain to please them with words which are not true.

And as I was sort of doodling, I was thinking, surprise and fear - probably fairly similar so let's just lose surprise. And that left us with five.

Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.

Yesterday is rarely too early but tomorrow is frequently too late.