Every year I try to grow as a player and not get stuck in a rut. I try to improve my game in every way possible. But that trait is not something I've worked on, it's part of me.
I was at rock bottom for a year and a half - and the people who got me out of my rut were my fans.
I have a lot of maneuvers in my back pocket, so to speak. And to me, the thing is to always surprise the audience so they're always seeing something new, and not just get stuck in the same rut.
People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.
I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, 'It's a wrap,' it's gone completely. I'm a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.
I did sign to Ruthless Records, but they didn't really support me.
When someone like me takes a sabbatical, it leads to a few happy realisations. It was only when I was away that I realised how films are such a big part of my life.
Well, I took a sabbatical. I walked away from shooting movies because I couldn't handle the travel. I'm a single parent. I had young kids, and I found that keeping in touch with them from hotel rooms and airports wasn't working for me. So I stopped.
To me, the contemporary novel suffers from a lack of sense of place - or spirit of place, if you will. It's not important to most writers, I must assume, or they try to research a given background on sabbatical. Not for me. I write about places I've lived long before I ever set pen to paper.
Mediocrity scares me. It's the fear of not being as good as you want to be. If you give over to that fear, it will sabotage you. As much as I can, I try to use that fear to guide me.
I always have strong urges to sabotage myself. Whenever someone says they like something about my music, I tend to not want to do that anymore. It's not even that I don't like it anymore: it's that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.
Oh, I started out young. They handed me a cotton sack when I was about 8 years old. Give me a little small one, tell me to fill it up. I never did like the farm but I was out there with my grandmother, didn't want to get away from around her too far.
If the club decides to sack me, honestly, I don't feel this pressure.
In high school I had sex with girls quite a few times. They were straight women who I convinced to jump in the sack with me.
I'm fortunate: I can play as long as I want to play. There's no coach or trainer who is going to say to me that I'm dropped or sacked, it's time to move on. I can play as long as I want to play.
The fact that these owners sacked me doesn't mean that our relationship is broken. I still get on well with Florentino, and although I haven't spoken much with Abramovich since I left Chelsea, I have no problem with him.
When I was at Madrid, I knew even by the December of that season that I would be sacked, and if they hadn't dismissed me, I would have resigned.
I want to be a manager, it wouldn't scare me, but I also think you could be sacked in six months and you'd have to take the kids back to school with your tail between your legs.
To be honest, when a manger is sacked, for me it's also the responsibility of the players. We have to take responsibility for it - it's not only the manager and the staff.
It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.
