Mikel Arteta Quotes

I feel really good right now. It will really be a tough decision. It's so hard to give up what you love doing. Hanging up the boots will not be an easy thing to do.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life in politics. When I'm finished with my term as governor, I'm going back to the life that's waiting for me in the private sector.

And it was a huge emotional thing to leave the law and become unemployed - to be a student again.

It might have been easier to retire, to say my knee couldn't handle it and let that be that. At the same time, the prospect of not being able to compete in gymnastics anymore was heartbreaking.

When you've done something for more than a third of your life, your whole adult life, and then all of a sudden you're going to have to switch off and say, 'No more,' you want to grasp as much of it and enjoy the last few years of it as much as you can. Because you can't get those years back.

I'm retiring because my time is up.

Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of achieving the standards I'd set myself and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm sorry I didn't feel any better or play any better, but that's what happens at the end of careers.

I love track and field, but I also know the day will come when I will have to do something else.

I never intended to box forever, and always planned to move on to do other things.

When it sort of finally sets in that you're not going to be doing that anymore... it's disappointing.

Now I am ready to set new goals and start a new career for myself outside of the ring.

When you are playing, it is so hard to think about what life will be like after football. I understand. When you are playing, and you are young, you think you can play your whole life. You think it will never change. But it will change. You can't play forever. No one can.

I always get this feeling on my last day of work that I'm never going to work again.

I never looked at hockey as work. Now that I'd finished playing, I had to go to work.

Wimbledon 2014 will be my last slam. To be honest, I am already starting to miss professional tennis, having played at the highest level for two decades. It is what has given me my identity, and I will miss every bit of the action. The thought that I will not be playing anymore is daunting.

I tried to make a distinct point that I wasn't retiring - that I was moving on.

By 30, I was separated from my husband, and I clearly remember sitting in my lovely office with a magnificent view, staring at a very lucrative pay stub, and bursting into tears because I was just miserable. So I had to make a decision: Keep following my plan, or be honest with myself and search for my true passion.

I love my career. I thought, if I was lucky, I would retire as a senior intelligence officer, still working on the issues of counterproliferation. But that didn't happen, so - new chapter.

I loved every minute of my time at Microsoft, but I had always envisioned having another phase of life just because I thought that would be interesting. It had never been my plan to work until I literally didn't want to do anything and then hang it up.

I might feel a little bit empty, and it might get to me for a short time, but I'm hoping to keep my association with football and with broadcasting - I'm not retiring from everything; I'm retiring from the BBC. I'm certainly not going pipe and slippers.

I know too well how much I am going to miss football after my career for me to put up my own barriers.

Any time you end your career, no matter what it is, it's tough to leave, regardless of if you know it's time or not.

I had told my wife that I was thinking of retiring at the end of the year. I was thinking I didn't want to do it anymore, but then I was traded to the Dodgers.

I'll know when to retire when I don't want to push myself anymore.