“It’s not paranoid, I’m careful how I choose my friends. The people hanging around, I’m always trying to figure out what their motives are, why are they hanging around, I’m watching their moves.”

“The suspension was my fault. I did do that—I took that thing. But all that’s in the past.”

“It’s not important for me to be a star, but it is important for me to be one of the better players. I won’t feel comfortable with not living up to my potential. I don’t want to be spoken of as the player who had potential who never reached it, so I am going to work extra hard to try to be the best I can be.”

“I want to maximize my potential as a player. I want to be as good as I could possibly be. And if I do that, I think I could be one of the best players out there.”

“I want to be my own player. I want to be Julius Peppers. I don’t want to be the next Lawrence Taylor. I don’t want to have to live with his legacy.”

“I’m out to prove something—that I’m all for real and that I can do it on my own without any help.”

“As a kid, I never thought I saw myself as unusual. I always thought that lots of people could do what I did. More and more I realized I was wrong.”

“I believe that if I committed to basketball, I could make an impact in the NBA. I now see football as my job and my greatest challenge.”

“I’m not a real talkative person on the field. I don’t say anything—nothing—the whole game. If I’m not saying anything and they don’t know what I’m thinking, that starts them thinking. That gets into their head.”

“I haven’t played against a tackle yet who could stop every move I have.”
“You’ve got to be disciplined. You have to be under control going in there but be aggressive at the same time.”

“Once I really maximize my potential—I don’t know when that’ll be, a year from now, three or four years from now—I think I can be one of the great ones.”