Monday night, there ain't a better time to showcase your talent.

My dad would leave at 4 or 5 in the morning and then I wouldn't see him until evening. The conversations we used to have, he would tell me, 'A man takes care of his home first. A man handles his responsibility. He doesn't ask another man for anything.'

I always know how to play this game. It's about being smart.

Football has always been a contact sport, and it's always going to be a violent sport, and there are going to be repercussions from that. But every player that ever played this game and will play this game, they're signing up for it.

Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can't play this game forever. When I'm finished, maybe I'll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.

I want to be the best, but it comes with a lot of work. And it can be pressure if you put it on yourself in that way. But if I keep going the way I'm going, and with the good Lord guiding me the way he's been guiding me, and the way I let him take control of my life, the sky is the limit.

The old G's, or the gangsters, turned me away from the street because they knew my dad, and they had a lot of respect for my dad, but because I was an athlete.

I know I have the abilities to be a head coach or D-coordinator. It's something I wouldn't mind doing. But it's tough being a player and going back and doing something like that, because egos get in the way.

Especially in black communities, we've been so groomed to stay where we are and not like people in the other neighborhoods. It's crazy. It won't allow people to experience life and see what the world truly has to offer. People are stuck in their ways, stuck in their communities, stuck on their streets.

When kids grow up into adults now... they learn that taking care of their body is like taking care of their car. You're not going to put bad gas into your car. Why not treat your body the same way? It makes all the sense in the world for us to do the right thing for our bodies.

We always said it's not suit-and-tie on the football field.

Working out is a part of life.

We tend to want to stay here in Louisiana as Louisiana people. We've just got to be mindful that there are other things out there, and we really need to open our kids' minds to get them to go to college. Get them to get away. Then come back and help the next ones behind us.

When you play sports, when you're on a team with people from different walks of life, and you have to look after each other and count on each other, race and all that stuff goes out the window when you are in the locker room.

It wasn't about accolades, but showing that I was bred and predestined to be one of best football players to come into the league - and, every Sunday, to help my team to win.

You don't hear about tradition in the NFL, but we have a tradition in Baltimore. It was just an awesome place to be.

Help each other, encourage each other, lift each other up.

There's not many people - only really the great ones - who realize what they were born to do.

I've been treated with the utmost respect by the whitest of white guys, and I've been treated bad by the whitest of white persons. I've been treated bad by the blackest of black persons and treated good by the blackest of black persons. So at the end of the day, I know it's about humanity - do you have a good heart or a bad heart?

Pretty much just stay humble. And continue to work hard and let the game come to me and try not to make even more plays or jump plays. Just let the game come to me and play my defense and my responsibility.

When you've been playing the game for so long and sports for so long, it can take a toll on your body, and that's what we're putting on the line, and that's what our argument is as players when we're doing negotiations and stuff like that.

We all played sports, my brothers, my daddy, my uncles. That's all we had.

Not every officer is a bad police. I work with police officers. I know first responders.

Just being from Louisiana, being from the southern part of Louisiana, Metairie, close to New Orleans and growing up in St. Rose. There are a lot of things to overcome.

We had church and sports, and that's how we stuck together. We were so hungry sometimes, but if somebody's playing football, you can completely forget about eating until later on that night.

When I'm on the football field, I'm giving you everything. Do the Ravens know that? Yes they do.

We need more of our young youth graduating from college trying to get their education, and trying to be contributing members, positive contributing members to the community.

I look at the quarterback and the receivers. You look at the quarterback, the formation. I focus on the passing game and react on the running game. You look at it over and over, then sooner or later, it becomes like a movie. You ever notice how you quote movies? That's all film watching is.

I tried to go and get my master's in-season. That's a tough cookie to try to eat, but it's just a great thing.

If you play NFL football, you play football, these are the consequences. There's choices and consequences in life for everything. There's consequences if you play football.

Football was easy.

I am going to graduate school, but that ain't got nothing to do with football.

I know the hustle that is in Louisiana. Knowing where you are from, really where you're from, helps you to help the community. That's every city, but New Orleans is just different. We have big hearts, but it's just a matter of us having the information, having the people to push you along like I had.

Not everybody is going to understand you. You can't please everybody. That's just human nature. Everybody has their opinion, and that's going to be there. You deal with it. You take it in stride. You take the good with the bad, the bad with the good. That's part of life.

When I was in Baltimore, it was all about raising me and not having players come in and out of there. It was about raising men, and there was a reason why it built up to the success.

Sometimes I wake up and I think, where did my memory go? But at the same time, I signed up for it. Football has been like that for a long time, for ages.

I love this game, and I put my heart and soul into it.

Everybody in the world knows that plans tend to change.

I'm always excited about life.

The fact of the matter is that people don't understand that football players are regular people just like them. And half of them don't understand the business. And most of them just want you to entertain them.

There's a lot of good fans out there, but there's also a lot of bad - I don't want to say bad people, but a lot of people who just want to try to get on your nerves and stuff like that, man.

I'm not the kind of person to hold my tongue.

I was a San Francisco fan when Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott and those guys where there. And I watched Joe Montana get cut and go to K.C. and still ball.

I was very proud to hear that my friend Andre Johnson was like, 'Man, I'm going back to school.' I was so excited because, yeah you have great talent. You do everything on Sundays, you do everything on the field, but you went to college, and I'm not saying that you forgot about it, but that was on your mind when you first went.

I know everybody wants to make it to the NFL, but it doesn't happen like that.

I love Bill Belichick. He is a great coach, great man - raising men to do the right thing and win championships in this league.

I've just been playing football for a long time. I've been playing football since I was a little kid, so it's just some natural blessings that God has blessed me with to get to the ball and understand what I've been doing over the years.

Not everybody likes Ed Reed.

If the youth has a good foundation, then I think they won't grow into the bad situations they get into.

We've got to help our community out. We've got to help Baltimore out, because it's a lot of things that have been handed down in our society that we're dealing with.