I know what I try to do. I try to be professional, turn up, not make too much fuss, do the job.

I'm not a great fiction reader. I love history. I love history and philosophy.

My career is playing the guys who go, 'Boo.' That's what I do.

If you're confident, then it helps you live up to your potential, but if you believe because you went to a certain school it means you're entitled to have a particular career, you'll fall flat on your face eventually.

The biggest motivation for me is my desire to be the best.

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

There were many times that I took such a big hit that I was dazed; I'm not going to lie. I'd see black, but I'm still looking for the puck. Where's the play going? I'm going to keep going. Same thing in figure skating. If I take a hard fall, I'm going to get up, and I'm going to do the next jump.

When I was a junior and an up-and-coming athlete, I don't think I looked to anyone for inspiration. I was so busy trying to improve myself and learning these new events and learning about the decathlon in general that I didn't really have time to focus on anyone else.