Looking for perfection is the only way to motivate yourself.
The most important thing, the biggest love of my life, is my snooker. Ive never been so emotionally ingrained in something - in a person, an object, anything - as I have in snooker.
Today I got so annoyed with myself that I lost my patience and walked away from a game that, with hindsight, I should have continued [on quitting a game early on against Hendry]
Running clears my mind, and gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
I know what I want to do and there's no point giving my secrets away.
I thought 'How can I stop playing or give myself an excuse to stop playing? So I snapped my cue on Friday. It was quite fun doing it. It's gone.
The relentless pursuit of perfection has been my problem over the years. It's maybe held me back.
I do entertain a lot of negative thoughts and I haven't got any self-belief. But I haven't done bad for someone without any self-belief.
My dad's method in his madness was to try every sport and then observe what I liked. I played football, tennis, golf, cricket but I loved my snooker.
People think I don't like interviews but I don't mind speaking about proper and interesting stuff. When it's stupid stuff to build your image and you are told to mention this and mention that, I hate it.
I don't think I suffered with depression, I don't think I'm a depressed type of person - I just think I suffered a depression to do with snooker, and I just couldn't handle it. I could go out and play, but take me out of there and I couldn't do life. It was a nightmare, my life just felt like a bit of a nightmare.
At this moment I am feeling disappointed with myself and I am hurt and numb...
My hearts not been in it this year [2005], and I've not been playing well, but I keep on winning.
I've been semi-successful. I've done all right but I'm not the player I was. Who do I think will win the world championship? John Higgins. Have I been good for snooker? I don't know.
It's not an irrational decision, I've been thinking about this for quite a while and maybe it'll be good for me [on his career break
