Looking back, my whole life seems so surreal. I didn't just turn up on the doorstep playing rugby, I had to go through a whole lot of things to get there.

I was on dialysis for 18 months before the transplant, so it was important I tried to look ahead to days like my comeback this Saturday. You need those big goals to drive you on.

It's been a long road back to health and fitness for me. I am just glad to have been given the opportunity to do what I love most.

For me to get through the toughest periods in my life, I had to look within to find the energy to do it. I don't give up. Never have. Never will.

The biggest thing for me is just to get out on that field. Just to do that will be incredible.

How do I take a step? How do I lift my foot off the ground, move it through the air a little bit and then bring it down? I had to teach myself to walk again.

It was in 2003 that I realised there was no choice but to have dialysis treatment - by the time of the World Cup that year, I could barely walk. A year later, I finally had a kidney transplant.

I have a stab wound on my left hip and one on my thigh and a slash mark across my right calf. I have a bottle stab wound on my left calf.

When I was playing I felt tired all the time. My recovery period was a lot longer than the other players. They'd be ok after an hour - I'd have to stay in bed till the next session.

Towards the end of 2003 it was hard to get through training - and the darkest point was when a doctor told me there was a possibility I could end up in a wheelchair.

It's a really exciting time to be involved in Welsh rugby.

It is always worth itemizing happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers of happiness while you can.

Spiritual love is a position of standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides.

Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions.

You have to watch your handicap. My son Steve says, "Never make a putt you don't have to."

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

Especially when you play at home, you need a good atmosphere behind you.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'

So friends, every day do something that won't compute.