There's no greater feeling in the world than when you can put a smile on somebody's face just by walking into a room. It's unbelievable. And if I have that power, who am I to waste it, you know?

If you don't have that vision for the end goal, you have no clue where you're going, and you're going to work very hard to go nowhere.

What I remember most about high school are the memories I created with my friends.

A reputation takes years and years and years to build, and it takes one press of a button to ruin it. Don't let that happen to you. You've done so much work; you've put in so much effort. Don't let one moment ruin your entire life because you wanted to be funny or you were mad or because you had a mood.

I will always do what I can to help others, but when I retire, I want to be a dad and a husband. I want a house and a dog in the yard. I want to have barbecues.

My family is a middle-class family. When I grew up and learned how much it actually cost for us to play hockey, I could not believe that my parents let us play as long as they did.

If you want to be remembered as great, if you want to be a legend, you have to go out there every single day and do stuff.

A sack is way better than any nightclub. A touchdown is way better than any bar experience I've ever had.

When it comes down to that moment, when it's me against you, you know in your head whether you worked hard enough. You can try to lie to yourself. You can try to tell yourself that you put in the time. But you know - and so do I.

I'm a Wisconsin kid, so I like brats and burgers and stuff like that. Cheese curds.

People play with pain all the time.

In Wisconsin, style-wise, it was all about bundling up, maybe wearing a hat and forgetting about your hair.

I ate a whole 20-inch pizza by myself one time.

It's hard to understand the life that I live and rationalize some of the things that I do. I don't need someone questioning every move that I make, asking me why I don't just relax. When there's no one asking me those types of questions... to me, it's peaceful.

You can find just about everything on my iPod from Eminem to Zac Brown to Justin Timberlake to One Direction. Everything is on there.

I respect every guy that has walked away. I think every single guy in this league makes his own decision, and that's perfectly fine. The reason I respect that and the reason I think every guy has his own way of dealing with things is because, in my personal opinion, I know what I'm getting into.

Since my sophomore year in high school, I knew I didn't want to do anything but be a professional athlete. I knew when I got to college there was no way anybody was going to stop me from being an NFL player.

There's plenty of days when I don't want to eat chicken breast and broccoli and rice, but I know what I have to do, and I know the sacrifice I have to make.

Hockey, honestly, was my first love. The excitement, the fast pace, the intensity of the game... I still love it to this day.

I want to go out and chase greatness. That's all I want to do.

It's pretty neat to be able to help the team in different ways.

I have no idea when it's going to be, when I'll retire.

Each year, I write out a goal sheet with what I expect. If I showed anybody else my goal sheet, they would have said I was crazy.

I love brunch. Brunch is my favorite meal.

If you're going to nap, make sure you have a proper chunk of time blocked out. I'm not one of these guys that does the 15-20 minute nap. I don't play those games. I'm, like, an hour minimum. I'm not gonna lay down unless I know I have at least an hour.

Read each tweet about 95 times before you send it. Look at every Instagram post about 95 times before you send it.

I know that I'm going out there, and I know that I am going to get hit in the head. I know that's part of football. That's like a firefighter knowing he is going to go into a fire at some point. You know you are going to be put in danger's way, and you accept that risk, and you do it.

Growing up, you'd see Michael Jordan on everything from Gatorade to shoes - everything. Obviously, that's something pretty cool for an athlete to aspire to.

The one thing I know is, if I play good ball, things have tended to come along with it. Everything that I've ever done in my career has come off of playing good football. And so I realize I need to go out there, and I need to take care of my business; then everything else - all these cool, great things - come along with it.

I'm sure I frustrate the trainers - in fact, I know I frustrate the trainers to no end. But I think there's a very fine line. I listen to their advice. I take their medical expertise very seriously. But then I also, the reason I am where I am, the reason I play the way I play, is because I push beyond normal.

My cheat meals aren't even that exciting.

Houston is kind of a melting pot. There are many different cultures and ethnicities represented out there, even on my team. It's really cool: you'll see so many different things.

I get a lot of letters that say, 'I'm a normal, down-to-earth girl. I love to cook, and I love sports.' What I also get are letters from a whole bunch of moms saying, 'My daughter is awesome,' and, 'My daughter is a great daughter.'

In the off-season, I train twice a day, five times a week with my trainer. Then, there's always massages and neuromuscular therapy worked in there as well on different days.

If you're thinking like that - 'Does this person want me for me?' - then you're gonna have a hell of a hard time falling in love, 'cause you're constantly thinking about what they look like on paper.

I love the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Everybody has a job to do, and you just know that every day you have to do what it takes to get there. Of course, everybody has those days where you don't feel like doing it. I'm just like anybody else in that respect. But there's a difference between not feeling like doing it and not doing it period.

My goal is I want to create the 20-20-20 club: 20 sacks, 20 tackles for loss, 20 batted balls.

People always ask, 'Man, why don't you come out and enjoy it? Why don't you celebrate? Why don't you have any fun?' My fun is Sundays. Anybody can go to the club. You don't have to be good at going to the club to go to the club. You have to be good to be playing on Sundays, and to me, that's what's cool.

I feel like, growing up, I watched football, obviously, and you see great players, and as a fan, you want to watch the best you can possibly watch, and you want to see what's capable of being made.

I obviously would love to have a girlfriend, but a girlfriend deserves so much of your time and energy. And she deserves to be treated like a princess because that's how you should treat your girls. And if I can't give them that time and that devotion because of my dedication to football, then I don't feel like I should almost waste their time.

Teams are always hitting me in the gut, trying to grab me when I jump and stuff like that. But I expect it.

Trust me, I would love to have a wife and kids. I would very much enjoy that. But I also know that you have to be in the right place to do that.

You don't know who wants you for you, who wants you for the money, who wants you for the fame. You have no idea. And how would you know? There's no way.

My dad's a firefighter, so I know what it's like for policemen and firefighters to be on their own on Christmas Day.

I'm always trying to learn and grow, so my diet has, over the years, evolved.

You have to find the right situation, and you have to be in that right mindset where you can give everything you have to that. Because whatever I do, I want to be the best at. I want to be the best husband. I want to be the best father.

I'm going to continue to work to be the best player in the world, and whenever that doesn't sound fun to me anymore, that's when it's over.

It may not matter to anybody now, but when you go out there and perform on the field, that's what matters.

I'll fight a bear, but I don't like spiders. I'm not a fan of those.