I don't think I am a workaholic. I prefer to keep busy. It is better than the alternative.
— Sebastian Coe
I don't want to go back into politics - absolutely not.
I wouldn't have raced a horse. But you'll then throw back at me that Jesse Owens raced against a horse, and he's one of my heroes, so I'm not going to say it was a silly stunt. I know too much about horses. They're highly unreliable, and they've got brains the size of golf balls.
I was ecstatic when we won - to host the Olympics is one of the biggest opportunities in living memory. It will help change the lives of young people and transform east London.
At university level, I had an economics lecturer who used to joke that I was the only student who handed in essays on British Airways notepaper.
I'm probably one of the few people who can say I did all three types of state sector schooling.
Since the break-up of the 1990s, Russia has not had winter sports facilities. All the winter sport venues were effectively located in countries that are no longer part of the federation. There is a strong argument for saying Sochi's legacy will be this country will have winter sports facilities it did not have before.
In all Games, there is always a tendency, particularly in the lead up to the Games when there isn't much sport to talk about, to write about things that are not sport.
You hope all good athletes run on the balls of their feet. You don't want them coming down heel first. The perfect style is the foot to come down with a slight supination and on a tilt to the outside.
I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that's what I did. I did it of my own volition.
I'm a Chelsea season-ticket holder, and I've supported them for 37 years, so any judgment of Manchester United by me is seen as biased.
During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year.
There is nothing so marginal as a party that has been in power for 18 years and slides into opposition. You influence nothing.
Sacrifice is going to war for your country. Sacrifice is a brave young man being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan.
Football was not what I was put on this planet to do.
I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish.
The biggest fragility in a project is often just the inability to be able to explain to people why you are doing it, and when you're going to do it, and what's going to happen.
My mum was critical in getting me to recognise very early on that although what I was doing was pretty serious, quite selfish, and probably to most people pretty obsessive, there actually was more to life than running quickly twice round a track.
Inspirational leaders need to have a winning mentality in order to inspire respect. It is hard to trust in the leadership of someone who is half-hearted about their purpose, or only sporadic in focus or enthusiasm.
Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young.
My motivation to compete was always about improving one year to the next. At 34, I realised I'd never run any quicker, so why hang on? But I love running and still run along woodland trails and beaches every few days.
I've always referred to my father as 'my coach' because we were always able to separate our relationship into the roles of coach and parent.
My mother was Indian, brought up in Delhi. My grandparents were born in Bow and Poplar.
My overwhelming concern will always be the well-being of the athletes. In Olympic sport, it is rare for competitors not to devote half their young life to this. Their families will have given up all sorts of things to allow them to do that.
Marathons don't come to you overnight.
Good running is the ability to have a very well defined on-board computer. The ability to judge distances when running in traffic.
Nobody ever becomes an expert parent. But I think good parenting is about consistency. It's about being there at big moments, but it's also just the consistency of decision making. And it's routine.
I know many people who are actually queasy about the idea that their kids may harbour sporting ambitions.
Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something.
Some people found it difficult to understand my relationship with my father, but that may have been because they couldn't get beyond their relationship with their own parents.
Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully.
There's a difference between hurting when you lose and being a bad loser. You don't compete at the highest level of sport to feel comfortable about losing, but you behave in a civil way when it goes wrong because that is the flip side.
When I moved to Sheffield and went to a secondary modern in the Seventies, there were certain challenges: if you've got a name like Sebastian, you either learn to fight or to run.
I think I'm probably just an old-fashioned Tory. I don't wake up each morning trying to figure out what kind of Conservative I am; for me it's quite instinctive.
I have always been very good at being able to structure my time. My mother had a huge influence on me. My dad was my coach. He was a hugely influential figure.
When the subsidies are going out there to fund arts, I'd like to see jazz given a better shake of the dice. It attracts as many people as opera does, but not the subsidies.
Interviewing Hugh McIlvanney, I got to read lots of his stuff again. I'm a big fan of his writing.
I started daily training at the age of 14. When I was 16 years old, I was running twice a day.
Sport was an integral part of school life. The most influential teachers were not necessarily the PE teachers, but the teachers who helped me in sport because they had an understanding of what you were going through.
I still run every other day. Longer at weekends. I probably do 35 miles a week.
We have to recognise there are very few countries you will take the Games to where somebody doesn't have issues on foreign or domestic policy.
The Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race.
I started track and field when I was 12 and didn't get to an Olympic Games until I was nearly 23. By any stretch of the imagination that's a very long apprenticeship.
In 1981, I spoke at the Olympic Congress. I was scandalised that I was the first athlete to be given that chance. But I made the most of it.
I can remember the day I decided I would retire from competitive athletics as vividly as if it were yesterday.
The characteristic shared by people at the top of their profession is that, to get better, they crave criticism. Most people don't like criticism, but if you are trying to shave two tenths of a second at 800 metres, that is what you crave.
I had a very ordinary background in Sheffield; I went to a secondary modern, but I saw something on TV in 1968 that inspired me to join an athletics club, and 12 years later, with great coaching and the support of people who loved me a lot, I ended up at an Olympic Games.
Getting the Games for London has been the fulfilment of a dream. It is one which I truly believe can change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people for the better. But in the end, nothing can quite compare with winning your first Olympic gold medal.
I can be a bit impatient sometimes. If I'm really focusing on something, I can expect everybody to move at the same pace, and that's probably not massively endearing.
I will go to my grave believing that participation is best driven by the well-stocked shop window.
