Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Brian O'Driscoll
The victory is always sweeter... winning things with friends.
You've to celebrate the good days because there are brutal days that make the good ones sweet.
If you stick around long enough and you do enough of the right things, you get seen in a largely positive light.
Team sports are very important for shaping personalities. It's important that kids understand the mentality behind playing team sports and playing for one another and playing with friends.
If you stop doing a skill you've done for years for any period of time, there's an adjustment period to get it back. In anything you do. Motor skills won't work as fast, because repetition is everything.
If you can be a good role model for people, well, great. You try and live your sporting life and the rest of your life as well as you can, and if it's something that people admire, well, fantastic. I don't sit at home and think about it too much, though - there's plenty of other things in my life going on.
What do you remember about Jason Robinson? His feet. Not how improved he was under a high ball or his kicking skills. Everyone remembers those feet. He could go round you in a phone box.
I think my form dipped after the Six Nations in 2007, from the World Cup onwards.
In a team situation, I think the players are more inclined to give the answer they believe the psychologist is looking for rather than maybe being totally honest.
There is no point winning the semi if you don't win the final. It's as simple as that. No one will remember a big semifinal if you lose the final, so you have to do it all again.
I don't really want to be the centre of attention.
I'm very happy to have been a one-club man, but I wouldn't shoot down guys who have gone off and played in multiple clubs either because, essentially, it is an earning that people are after.
There is still a big onus to be coached. I understand the best teams don't need a huge amount of coaching, but that's when a coach should decide not to do coaching.
When you are captain, you are never speaking for yourself.
I enjoy training so much, sometimes I don't want it to stop.
That's what happens in the world. You get offered superior contracts.
I would always treat my attacking game as the more natural part. With defence, you have to get yourself in positions to understand the game and understand situations and that might not be as natural a thing.
I've been a professional rugby player all my life; I don't really know anything different.
I'm an eternal optimist.
People talk about loyalty of players to clubs. But in the everyday world, you don't see people being loyal to their company when they're getting offered considerably better deals elsewhere.
Aaron Cruden and Beauden Barrett have both been decent, but Dan Carter takes it on to a different level, and he kicks his goals better than both of them.
I was a football fan before I became a rugby fan.
I've always found when I was captain when other people were doing the talking for me, I didn't need to say as much, and when I did say one or two things, people tended to listen all the more.
I have ambitions to set records which will be hard to chase down, like getting more than 100 caps for Ireland.
Timmy Horan was a childhood hero. He was a great distributor, elusive, good stepper, very physical, defensively very sound. What a rounded player.
There's ego in all of us rugby players.
I've got my head fixed on the next part of life. I know there will be an adjusting period of just not being a rugby player for a while, and over that period I'll get my head around what the next challenge involves.
Growing up, I supported Manchester United, and my hero was Mark Hughes.
A physical therapist does some unbelievable stretching with me.
The big upside to being captain is it's a huge honour, but the downside is that there is definitely extra pressure.
If you can beat New Zealand, then you're probably going to win the World Cup.
I'm fairly adventurous with my eating. I've tried kangaroo, and Moreton Bay bugs, which are a kind of lobster, are so good.
Dressing rooms can be vicious places, in the best possible way, from a slagging point of view.
I get burnt in the sun, so there's no point me getting pecs for when I take my shirt off in the summer.
I don't feel comfortable with the kind of celebrity that has come my way - and I'm not very good at it, either.
I don't care that people thought I was one way for my whole career because now that I am not attached to a team, I can have my own opinion, I can have my own voice. I can link myself to my own thought process rather than a generic message most teams try to get across.
I found in the past when I did a bit of punditry, I was very conscious of not saying anything negative about people I played against, because players are elephants and they remember when someone says something - I stored things for years and just waited for my opportunity.
Rugby gave me a confidence. I was quite shy and relatively timid, but it gave me the confidence to be a little bit more out-going and back myself a bit more.
I'm not privy to the English set-up, but at the academies in Ireland, there is a huge focus on the weights room as opposed to whether they can throw a 10-metre pass on the run. They should be rugby players becoming athletes, not athletes becoming rugby players.
Before there was any chance to go to England, I changed schools, and it was rugby from there on in.
You cannot say things one week and then behave differently.
It's happened a couple of times in training when I hyper-extend my back. Some facet joints send all the muscles in my lower back and lumbar-spine into spasm.
It's rare enough as an older generation player that you're 100% fit - there's always something niggling.
One thing I learnt early on my career is that personal gratification takes second place.
Practise things you're good at. Keep on top of things you're not so good at, but be world-class at your best. Never think, 'I'm very good at this and that, I can leave those for a bit.'
Until you win a series, it's difficult to place yourself in that elite group of great Lions players. It's not enough to produce one-off performances or be nearly-men.
My missus knows to leave me alone.
Just because you lost your last game doesn't mean you change anything.
I used to love looking at a recipe, getting all the bits and pieces in the shops, getting them ready and prepared... I don't really have the time to do that anymore.
