John Cena Quotes

The key is to be a personality outside of the ring and then bring that personality with you inside the ring.

In WWE there's a huge degree of acting you need to have to become legendary, to become popular. You have to become a great actor in WWE and that's something I've honed from a young age. I could never be the biggest guy on the show when I first started wrestling; it was all about the giants. But I could have the biggest personality, the biggest character.

Being a pro wrestler can be kind of difficult sometimes. We have a perception about what we do - and I totally understand the perception, because we're a weekly episodic program, and we're having fun all the time, so people think that's kind of the most talented thing I could do.

I love wrestling, and I love telling a story to the audience.

Wrestling is to go out there and perform and make people believe that either of the performers in the ring can win - either the bad guy or the good guy.

You're out there to perform. You're out there to entertain. Whatever position that you're put in, be it a heel or a babyface, go out there steal the show.

Obviously, wrestling is a lot of fun, and I love it. But on the mic is where I have the most fun.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

I'm a storyteller, I'm an actor, an entertainer.

I always tell people this - when you start wrestling, don't forget that part you liked as a child. If you can keep a bit of that in your act, you can keep a bigger audience.

As WWE Superstars, we want to have confidence and stand strong in the ring.

When I am on 'Raw' and 'Smackdown,' I try to make the best of it.

I've always liked being on the performance end of it. I've come up with different ideas, but as far as being a creative writer, I'm not sure about that. I've always liked the performance end of it and wrestling, getting in the ring in front of a live crowd.

To portray something that you're really not, it's like a little escape, and I love to act and to be dramatic. I feel like the wrestling ring in WWE is the perfect platform to do that. It's totally acceptable.

This isn't a competitive sport. Wrestling is not the NFL or the NHL. It's not really sports. It's entertainment. And in order to be entertaining, you have to create emotion. And you can't create emotion by simply having a wrestling match.

Without talent, I don't care how funny the writers are or how many comedy lines they come up, without wrestlers you can't have a wrestling program.

In the grand spectrum of things in WWE, you are wrestling for that camera and that camera and that camera - and all the cameras they have - and you have to make things work that way because, through that camera, there's a million people watching.

There were people that grabbed you just by talking, and that's what I loved about professional wrestling when I started out. That's why I'm already so good. That's why people literally hang on the edge of their seats when I have a mic because they want to know what I'm going to say.

I think one of the things that really endeared me to people was that people got to view more aspects of my personality than most because of the different things that I did within WWE.

Johnny Valentine's the one who said, 'I can't make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'm real.' It would take him forever because he was just stinkingly boring for 30 minutes of the 40-minute match, but he would let people hit him as hard as they could, and he would hit people as hard as he could.

Sasha Banks stood out. She had tons of personality. I thought she was really good in a sense. I liked her sass and personality.

I am a performer; that's what I like to do.

I'm always playing a role, whether it's the role of the mayor, the role of a news anchor, or a role of a crazy talk-show host. But there was a specific function. 'On Dancing With The Stars', I had nothing to do but be me, schlepping around the floor. And when I host 'America's Got Talent', that's really me just talking to regular folks.

WWE is a space where I thrived, and I loved, and I still do. I love connecting with an audience; that is the greatest thing about going back to WWE.

My home is at the WWE. I truly do love performing. The atmosphere here isn't like anything else. It's truly where I belong.