I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant.
A lot of kids do not know my club exists yet. I did not do any big advertising, and that's what I might do in the next two or three weeks, put something in the paper.
I have to say that when I was young, when any politician was talking I wasn't even interested. Maybe they were saying some nice stuff, but then if you put Michael Jordan on TV, I was interested!
I only deal in what is real. To be honest, I've never thought about what I could get out of football or where it would take me. I just wanted to play. I'm the same now.
And I don't really like golf. I know a lot of English footballers play, but I know that if I go with the club to play, sooner or later I will end up trying to smash the ball with my foot.
At the end of the day, you either want or you don't want to know about it. It's a mercy thing - you have to give back. However you do it, you have to give something back. You have to.
In July 2011, U.S. Soccer announced that they'd fired Bob Bradley and hired Jurgen Klinsmann as head coach. Jurgen had once been a world-class German striker; now he was regarded as a successful, if controversial, coach.
If there is a less likely sight on this earth than Clint Dempsey, the Texas trailer-park kid, doing downward-facing dog poses, or the stalwart Michael Bradley deep breathing through a tree pose, I have yet to see it.
If you told me to sit in a room, and you had a million dollars cash stacked right there and said, 'Don't move, don't twitch, don't do anything,' without a doubt, the million dollars would be mine.
When I see someone wearing fur, I just want to sit them down in front of one of PETA's videos and show them just how badly animals suffer for this supposed fabric that no one needs.
But the manager's bought wisely - the players who've come in have taken us on to a different level and the players who won promotion have also performed at the top level, so long may it continue.
I became more confident within myself and matured as a person and become a little bit more opinionated - maybe the lads might say a little bit too opinionated for their liking but that is just a natural progression for a player.
Genetic engineering was messy. To force a sequence of foreign DNA into a plant, you couldn’t just snip the desired gene from the bacteria and sew it on to the plant’s DNA sequence like an old woman working on a quilt.
I've gotten used to using individual lashes as well. A lot of girls will use strip eyelashes, but the glue comes out of each side and it gets messy. Individual lashes make your eyes look bigger and much more natural.
Here at Carolina, our World Cup opponents marked their calendars. Obviously the other nations wanted to win every game, but a big upset over the U.S. was something we knew other teams would cherish.
Some people asked me if it was going to be a downer to come back and play on a college team after playing on a world championship team, and I don't think they understand what it is like to play here.
If I go out in the street and one guy gets a picture, then someone calls the press to say Mario was there. The day after in the press, it's, 'Mario was there'. That's normal, I just walk in town like a normal guy.
Sometimes in football you deserve to win but lose. Other times you deserve to lose or draw but you win. That is the game, and it's why I've always said you should never try to predict anything in football, especially in Europe.
Not all dreamers are winners, but all winners are dreamers. Your dream is the key to your future. The Bible says that, "without a vision (dream), a people perish." You need a dream, if you're going to succeed in anything you do.
I've turned into a technological wizard. I can send emails now, which for me is unbelievable. They don't make any sense, but I can send them. I call it e-mithering.
Ever since I was a kid, I've dreamt about winning the Brazilian league, and I still dream about it now. I am doing everything I possibly can to make my dream come true.
