Tough times don't last, but tough people do. And I've been through some tough times, and I know a lot of people can recall tough times, and maybe are going through some tough times right now, but they don't last.

There's a disappointment there because I still feel there's an emptiness in my career that just wasn't filled.

There's nobody else on the face of this earth that's playing a sport at a highest level... with a transplant. That alone continues to inspire me, because I realize throughout the whole world the struggles that people are going through. I need to inspire them the best way I can.

If I would have listened to other people back in 2000 telling me I should have stopped playing basketball because of a kidney disease, I wouldn't have won a world championship.

The choice that you, as a Soul, have in relation to anything is always to be loving. Do you understand that this is the divine purpose that all of us as humans have been given - to love unconditionally?

I want life. I want to feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt.

To experience life you have to kind of face a lot of fears.

A good novel is an out-of-self experience. It lifts you off the ground so that you have the sensation of flying. It says, 'Look at the world around you; learn from the people in these pages, neither quite me nor quite you, how life is lived in so many different ways.'