My mom calls me an older soul because, growing up, she taught me stuff real early. Now I spend most of my time chasing wisdom, chasing understanding.

Even Rod Woodson will tell you his best year he had as a professional was when he was 36 years old. If you think about why, you're much wiser.

You can talk about what you see from the outside; it's hard to tell me who I am when you're just looking at me with a football uniform on. That's a totally different person. That's my job, that's it.

Let me explain my job very simply: My job is to line up five, seven, 10 yards in front of a man and run into him at full speed.

I was very close to my mother, and her death, which left a gaping hole in my life, has been very difficult for me and my father in a lot of ways.

Bedouin ways were hard even for those brought up to them, and for strangers, terrible: a death in life.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.