Boris Becker

Its silly to say it about a tennis player, but Im an unbelievable hero in Germany. And Germany needs heroes more than any place.

Tennis has to be very careful.Not everyone is a computer, it is very good we have John McEnroe. I hope we have a couple more.

It’s not that difficult to play well and win titles in a team like Barcelona, but it’s in the national side where you see a player’s true class. That was the case with figures like Pele, Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zidane. With Spain, Iniesta has shown that he is among the best players of all time and that’s why I rate him higher than Messi or Ronaldo. Even though the latter two have incredible scoring records for their clubs, they still haven’t won anything with Argentina or Portugal respectively.

The eyes of some of the fans at Davis Cup matches scare me. There’s no light in them. Fixed emotions. Blind worship. Horror. It makes me think of what happened to us long ago.

Before, I wouldn’t have sacrificed anything for tennis but when I met Barbara it was different. I would have sacrificed tennis for Barbara.

I’m not a God, I make mistakes.

We want to reproduce all those instruments which were prepared and used in America once upon a time.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say what is and what is definitely not possible.

This is the time. This is the place. This is the vastness. Right here is paradise. Always. Always.

You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn’t correct. We all start with all there is, it’s how we use it that makes things possible.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Enduring habits I hate…. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.

To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

[on Diana’s Death] I remember just feeling completely numb, disorientated, dizzy.

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

I attribute whatever I may have been able to accomplish in life far more to my wife than to anything else and to everything else put together. But I cannot flatter myself that I found her because I was a ‘good picker’, I believe profoundly that we are guided, led, in such momentous matters.

What is the purpose of life? I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.