In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

If you’re going to have sex, use a condom.

As long as I play ball, I can get any woman I want.

I can score 20 points if I want to, but that’s not my desire.

With me, everything’s right on the table.

I think marriage and athletes is a bad combination.

I didn’t want to be known as Madonna’s playboy, her boy toy.

I spent money, I slept with women around the league, but I always kept my mind on the game.

You can love me or you can hate me.

I don’t fit into the mold of the NBA man, and I think I’ve been punished financially for it.

I spent my whole childhood looking for an escape.

Karl Malone’s too high-class for a bum like me.

They say Elvis is dead. I say, no, you’re looking at him. Elvis isn’t dead; he just changed color.

I’m nothing more than a sports slave.

For five years I’ve felt like the best prostitute in a high-class whorehouse. But all the other girls get paid more than I do.

Chemistry is a class you take in high school or college, where you figure out two plus two is 10, or something.

The one thing I do that nobody else does is jump three and four times for one rebound.

I learned a lot I wouldn’t have learned roaming the streets of Dallas.

At least 50 times. I’ve jumped off a building, jumped off a cliff in a car. I’ve been in bedrooms when women came in with knives and guns.

For years the league has thought I’ve been on drugs. I would have burned out a long time ago if that was true.

When a high-profile personality lives like I do, everybody thinks that person is fated to die young.

This life is like a swimming pool. You dive into the water, but you can’t see how deep it is.

Wherever there’s money, there’s drugs, so to say drugs don’t exist in the NBA would be stupid.

If you have a problem with my answer that’s your problem, not my problem.

I’m hungrier than those other guys out there. Every rebound is a personal challenge.

Black culture is something I don’t relate to much at all.

I lost $35,000 in less than a week at the Mirage in Las Vegas.

Everybody’s talking trash these days, so why not keep quiet?

I want to do for rebounds what Michael Jordan did for dunks.

I go out with white women. This makes a lot of people unhappy, mostly black women.

I’m trying to find new ways to make this game more attractive.

The NBA believes if you play for a team and get paid by a team, you’re the property of that team for 24 hours a day.

To hang out in a gay bar or put on a sequined halter top makes me feel like a total person.

I’m the basketball version of a gravedigger.

I understand what rappers are talking about. I think rap is less about educating people about the black community and more about making money.

The doors fly open when you’re a professional athlete.

Why should I try to make you believe the things I believe in?

Fifty percent of life in the N.B.A. is sex. The other fifty percent is money.

I’ll be the judge of my own manliness.

If I want to wear a dress, I’ll wear a dress.

I’ve been homeless. I’ve worked at 7-Eleven.

I’m starting to see players copy what I do. I’m flattered.

I felt like calling attention to AIDS. I had the AIDS ribbon colored into my hair during the playoffs in ’95.

Death has always had a prominent place in my mind. There are times when I think somebody might kill me.

My feet are like gnarled old tree branches.

They didn’t have a problem with me being wild and crazy when it came time to fill the arenas.

There is so much hypocrisy in sports.

I don’t trust what this life has given me.

I can’t begin to describe the amount of crap I’ve taken for being a lousy free-throw shooter.

The people at the top of the league think they need to rein me in so I don’t become another Michael Jordan, somebody they aren’t able to mold and shape and make their puppet.

I wear women’s leggings under my clothes, but no lingerie.

You watch some teams these days and you wonder if they just met on the playground and decided to choose up sides.

I’m not one of those leeching sons of bitches. I want to earn everything I get.

I don’t feel anything when I watch Shaquille O’Neal play. I don’t feel anything coming off him.

I’ve got to give Larry Bird his due; he was a great player. He knew the game and he was smart.

The NBA’s chosen ones think I’m setting a bad example? I think they need to look around and stop taking themselves so seriously.

I go out there and get my eyes gouged, my nose busted, my body slammed. I love the pain of the game.

I couldn’t care less if the guy I’m guarding has HIV. I’m going to slam him anyway.

Wilt Chamberlain lied when he said he had 20,000 women.

There’s one thing everyone should understand: I like my character.

A player dreams of being a superstar, but he doesn’t want people flocking all over him asking for an autograph.

My rookie year, I was very immature.