I just try to stay positive and focused on the tennis, not let anything get to me, like crazy questions. But I'm tough, let me tell you, tough as nails.
Most of the time my own family feels like I don't need anything, I'm tough as nails and I don't have any feelings about anything. They really think that I'm this super tough person. I have a tough exterior, but I get upset. I have feelings and all those things. I wear my heart on my sleeve.
In my experience, growing up in Brooklyn and all that, the real tough guys didn't act tough. They didn't talk tough. They were tough, you know? I think about these politicians who try to pose as tough guys - it makes me laugh.
I try to take it and leave it in God's hands. I try to do what He wants me to do and come out here and perform the best I can for my teammates. That's my responsibility. This is a tough league. Outside of basketball, the lifestyle is tough - the travel. Honestly, I think that responsibility is pretty tough but I don't believe that God gives us anything we can't handle.
Talking with Ken Shamrock was almost a one-way conversation. I knew Ken was a tough guy, one of the toughest in the world at one time and still tough as nails. I had heard he had a tough background, but there are two times in that interview when I teared up. I'm "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and I didn't cry, but I teared up. Ken saw me, and he almost started tearing up, too. I'd never experienced anything like that. To hear some of the things that he went through, my jaw was on the floor.
I'm not going to get into details, but every band has their moments when things are tough. Just logistically, tough on your body, stress levels, psychologically tough, relationships can be tough.
I think you have to always stay focused and positive. If your positive energy dies out, like it happened to me for some time, then you can't do anything.
Don't play tennis. Do something you love and enjoy because it's a grind and it's a tough, tough, tough life. My position, I'm trapped. I have to do it.
'Tough' meant it was an uncompromising image, something that came from your gut, out of instinct, raw, of the moment, something that couldn't be described in any other way. So it was tough. Tough to like, tough to see, tough to make, tough to understand. The tougher they were the more beautiful they became.
People tell me all the time you have to be mentally tough to win the championship, and I feel like enough people hype it up to where you have to act different come playoff time. But I'm not a tough guy. So I don't know how to be tough. I don't know what I'm 'supposed' to be doing.
I have to be honest about this: I wouldn't tell a lot of kids to go and be writers. It's a tough, tough business. It's not a business. It's more like a tough road. It's a really tough road.
Professional courage is the steel fiber that makes an NCO unafraid and willing to tell it like it is. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to the soldiers' problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he is wrong.
It might just be me, but it's tough when you get drivers that don't stay where they should be.
I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it?
As for me, tough duty though it may be, I continue to do my part for the commercial recreation industry. Fishing, boating, tennis, golf, running, hunting, and all of this. Horseshoes. It's tough duty. Somebody has to do it, and I'm going to keep on.
When you are small, and you have to try and prove yourself, it is tough. When others are catching up and copy you, that's tough. We constantly need to change ourselves to stay ahead of the game.
Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.