For some reason, the fans got behind me, and I don’t know exactly why that is. I wasn’t supposed to main event WrestleMania XXX, but the fans were so vocal about it that the fans had no choice but to put me in the match. I’ve had a lot of lucky breaks.

My mind thinks in wrestling. As I’m thinking of things and my mind is being creative, it constantly keeps going back to wrestling. That’s my inspiration, and to not be able to express that puts me in a spot where I almost don’t know what to do with myself.

When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were, like, $20 each.

My passion is the wrestling.

I keep trying to convince people that I’m OK to wrestle, and I think that’s probably the hard part. A lot of times I’m trying to convince myself, too, that I can wrestle. It’s really hard, because the concussion issue is very subjective, and that’s the part that a lot of people don’t understand.

I think that when you look at a guy like Luke Harper you can see that he does in fact smell.

I always try to live in the moment.

My diet is very kale-heavy. It’s so nutrient-dense. I stay away from fake processed stuff.

I wasn’t a great athlete.

I used to be vegan. I’m not anymore, but I don’t eat hardly any meat. But it’s nice for me to go to a place like Chipotle where I can get some fresh veggies, some brown rice, some black beans, and all that kind of stuff.

Sometimes there’s cities where it’s just hard to find healthy food. You just have to be prepared.

I like having a bunch of different experiences. I don’t want to do just one thing for the rest of my life.

Yeah. Some people just don’t understand when their facial hair starts to look ridiculous.

I’ve always respected and appreciated Punk, but we never really hung out. We came from the same route, but we didn’t necessarily hang out in the same circles. I’ve always had a great appreciation and respect for his hard work.

My wife and I are very blessed. I am very grateful for the life that we lead.

When I watch myself, I see nothing but faults, like, ‘This I need to do different, this I need to do different,’ and so if there comes a point in time where I’m like, ‘Man, this whole thing is just getting really stale,’ I am not opposed to being the bad guy again.

Goat face is a horrible insult. My face is practically perfect in every way. In fact, from now on I demand to be called Beautiful Bryan.

You can’t be a champion until you can beat a bear.

WWE was an opportunity to wrestle in front of thousands – in 2013, I did 227 matches, and almost all of them were in front of more than three or four thousand people, with a high of 70,000 plus. It was an incredible experience to be part of that.

WWE doesn’t owe us anything.

I would define the new aspects of fatherhood like this: It is 75 percent amazing and 25 percent demoralizing. I think any new parent can understand exactly what I’m talking about.

Part of me wants to stay involved in wrestling, because I love it. But the thing I loved most about it was the wrestling part of it. I didn’t get into it to be famous or to be a TV star: I got into it because I loved the act of wrestling.

To me, the funnest part of wrestling is evolving. If you stay the same all the time, you’re eventually going to be left behind.

Sometimes, things just fall into your lap, and that’s pretty incredible.

You have to realize that a lot of life is just fortune and the ebbs of flows of what goes on.

I’m pretty much friendly and compassionate to everybody. But not to people in the ring.

I have to look at my career as ‘it was what it was,’ but I do wish there was more of it.

I’m a terrible actor. I would suck in films! The only way I would do well is if I was playing myself, which is what I did in my career.

Yokozuna’s Bonzai Drop literally scared me as a kid. It frightened me.

I will say this about the Miz: Even though I don’t like his wrestling style, he is a very hard worker. I have a huge amount of respect for him, and I want him to do well.

If you want to grow a beard like mine, the only thing I can tell you is that you have to have patience. You just have to let it grow.

I went from being a guy who was sparingly being used on television to being the World Heavyweight Champion and the focus of a lot of the storylines on Smackdown.

My biggest concern with the whole deal with ‘Total Divas’ and with WWE – and, you know, they want you to be engaged with social media and all this kind of stuff – I don’t want to live my life to entertain other people.

I don’t want to live my life to entertain other people. I have other things that I’d like to do.

I would like to do something to help people and help the world.

People say a lot of things, like “You can’t teach personality” or “You can’t teach charisma,” and I find that it’s not true.

Me, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Lyoto Machida, former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, all shared a two-bedroom apartment together.

I don’t want to be away from wrestling even a little.

Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao was one of the worst boxing matches I’ve ever seen, but millions of people watched it because of the personalities involved.

When I first got to WWE, the head of talent relations was John Laurinaitis, who is now my father-in-law, and the first thing I thought when I saw everything that he had to do is, I thought, ‘I would never, in a million years, ever want that job. You could not pay me enough money to have that job.’

I don’t do really well in cities, which is crazy given that we’re flying in and out of these major cities every week.

I’m not somebody who is genetically gifted when it comes to facial hair.

I loved wrestling in Philly. It was such an exciting time in my life. That really helped me grow and think differently. It was also just a lot of fun.

I think fans always want something new, but they want somebody who can deliver – to go out there and really entertain them and have good matches.

I just try to put as much logic into what I’m doing as possible and try to have fun with it.

I couldn’t even speak in front of a group of students when I was in high school. I could barely do that sort of thing. But once I started doing the “YES!” chant down to the ring and people would do it with me, it allowed me to feel more comfortable.

I am not the biggest, I am not the strongest, but I am Damn sure the toughest!

My rookie is manly, so manly, oh so manly his name is Derrick Bateman.

I spent a lot of time over in England wrestling at Butlins holiday camps for Brian Dixon and All Star Wrestling.

I feel like I’m not the greatest general manager in the history of general managers, but I do OK, and I’m learning as I go. I try to just do my best with it.

I don’t have a passion for TV or movies or acting. I have a passion for wrestling and I find it hard to leave that for TV and movies. But if it is a thing that is a short amount of time I would consider it, but wrestling is what I love to do!

I think one of the things that really endeared me to people was that people got to view more aspects of my personality than most because of the different things that I did within WWE.

I love wrestling, but to wrestle just one style for the rest of my life seems like it would really hold me down creatively.

That is one of the coolest things about WWE and wrestling in general. The fans have this very unique voice and this very unique power, and in no other sport and no other form of entertainment can the fans make their voices heard and it effect change.

I think really one of the hardest things for me always was just the walk to the ring.

I think whatever you have in your life, my opinion is that if you know that there’s something wrong, you try to fix it.

One of the wonderful things about wrestling, to me, is that you can protect people who have had head injuries.

It’s very difficult to grapple with the idea of not being able to wrestle any more, but you also have to come to the realization that this is a very physical business, and your body will only last you so long.

I’m having a really hard time with this retirement thing and not having wrestling.

A lot of people thought you couldn’t be a top-level athlete as a vegan, but people like Mac Danzig and Jake Shields are proving that’s wrong. And it’s better for me as a performer.

Wrestling is something that nothing else can replace for me.

I’m bigger now than when I was eating meat. My lifts in the gym are better. I’m in better shape.

I always feel like I wasn’t the best trainer, because I’m really good at teaching people stuff, but I’m not good if people aren’t super psyched – if they’re not like me.

I’m into environmental and ecological issues, so maybe that is an avenue to go down.

I love sweets. Like, every week of my life, I’ve had a cheat day.

I would read a lot about how to be a dad. I had never changed a diaper before we had Birdie.

Being a bad guy is fun for me.

One of the autobiographies I really liked was Bob Dylan‘s. It was interesting because he didn’t do it in a linear fashion.

Around here, no one deserves anything. You have to earn it.

What we do is entertainment. We entertain people. Sometimes we inspire people, but sometimes we are just a way to fill their time.

If you watch dogs play, they run and they fight, but they don’t fight to hurt each other. They just play. And that’s been me my entire life.

As you write about your life, there’s a lot of things that you think about that you regret. It’s interesting, because one of the things I regret the most is spending so much time focused on wrestling as opposed to focusing on my family.

I love wrestling, and I love the entertainment aspect of wrestling, but the rest of my life, I just want to be able to live and enjoy my life. I don’t want to be living it essentially for other people’s entertainment.

You’ve got two options: Tap or SNAP !!!

I have no problem with people eating meat. I would just like it, for the people who do eat meat, for the animals to be treated better. To be treated humanely. Cows in pastures living the life that they’re supposed to live. I have no problem with that.

William Regal has been the most influential person in my entire career.

With ladder matches, you can’t expect anything other than craziness.

My No. 1 dream match is Brock Lesnar. And I want that to be a WrestleMania match. I don’t know if the WWE will ever let that happen, because they might be afraid he might legitimately hurt me pretty bad.

People have said to me, ‘It must be nice to prove so many people wrong,’ but I’ve never really cared about proving anything to anybody else.

By no means do I consider myself this great sparkling personality.