Mike Tyson
Former American heavyweight boxing champion.
"I'll never be happy. I believe I'll die alone. I would want it that way. I've been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I'm really lost, but I'm trying to find myself. I'm really a sad, pathetic case. My whole life has been a waste. I've been a failure. I just want to escape."
In a 1988 Sports Illustrated interview: "Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent. Do you know what I do sometimes? Put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters."
"I have the same malice in my heart as far as the fight game is concerned, but outside the ring, I won't say anything a dignified man won't say."
Reported in The New Yorker as: “At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.”
"I put people in body bags when I'm right."
After his final fight: "I felt like I was 120 years old. I feel like Rip Van Winkle right now."
"I didn't know how to be any other way. I felt like one of those barbarian kings just coming to conquer the Roman Empire."
"It's such a shallow world I am involved with and I can't take it no more."
"No one gives a fuck about me. No one cares if my children starve, if they're on welfare. I have to support my children. I need more money."
What I want in a woman is protection. Loyalty. Companionship. Loyalty, friendship, companionship, ferociousness. I want her to protect me, and have my back to the bitter end. If I have a fight, I want her to jump in. Even if I'm winning; even if she's ninety pounds. I like strong women—not necessarily a masculine woman—but I like strong women. I like strong, say a woman who runs a C.E.O. corporation. I like a strong woman with confidence—massive confidence—and then I want to dominate her sexually.
"People say 'Poor guy.' That insults me. I despise sympathy. So I screwed up. I made some mistakes. 'Poor guy,' like I'm some victim. There's nothing poor about me."
"I'm just like you. I enjoy the forbidden fruits in life, too. I think it's un-American not to go out with a woman, not to be with a beautiful woman, not to get my dick sucked ... It's just what I said before, everybody in this country is a big fucking liar. [The media] tells people ... that this person did this and this person did that and then we find out that were just human and we find out that Michael Jordan cheats on his wife just like everybody else and that we all cheat on our fucking wife in one way or another either emotionally, physically or sexually or one way."
"I don't do anything. My life sucks."
ESPN reporter: There were reports, Mike, that you were out partying in Vegas. Is that, in fact, the case? Tyson: This is not true. This is not true at all. Um, one day, I went out one day - because when somebody trains, you just get crazy and bored - and I went to a strip club because I gave a dancer a lap dance. Reporter: You gave HER a lap dance? Tyson: That's just what I like to do. I do what I want to do.
"My father was a pimp before he became a deacon or something. These people know how to handle women. I'm the worst guy in the world with women. They run circles around me."
"One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died I was devastated and was gonna use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard."
"I'm the best ever. I'm the most brutal and vicious, and most ruthless champion there's ever been. There's no one can stop me. Lennox is a conqueror? No, I'm Alexander, he's no Alexander. I'm the best ever! There's never been anybody as ruthless! I'm Sonny Liston, I'm Jack Dempsey. There's no one like me. I'm from their cloth. There's no one that can match me. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart! I want to eat his children! Praise be to Allah!"
"I've been a prima-donna. I was taken care of since I was 13. That's why I am the way I am today. I was spoiled, like a brat. I had anything I wanted. That's crazy to be that way all your life. Everybody's taking care of you, but manipulating you at the same time. Very few people have a life like that. Most people have to work like slaves their whole lives. I've never had a job in my life. What I know how to do is hurt big, tough men — in the street and off."
"I don't have the stomach for this anymore. I don't have anything to fight for anymore."
"I’m too stigmatized in this country, I want to do something that will have a tangible effect on people. I live in a world where I’m not too media-friendly, I would never be successful in this country."