Quotes from Stephen Hendry

I find it very difficult when, due to a lack of confidence, I don't produce and lose matches I could have won.

You get better as the rounds go on.

Snooker is my sanctuary and always has been.

When I started, there was never a great history of people doing well in snooker from Scotland. By chance, I got a table for my Christmas. If I hadn't got that, then none of this would have happened.

People often write to me, addressing the envelope, 'Stephen Hendry, Snooker Player' or 'Stephen Hendry, Scotland,' and it reaches me.

There are players out there who want to dominate and keep their opponent sitting down. They want to make centuries and win frames at a single visit, and I like to see that.

However much I try, I can't shake off the effects of the yips.

When I'm practising on my own, my game feels great, but there's a big difference between practising on your own and playing against people.

The worst loss in my career - the 2002 World Championship final against Peter Ebdon.

You really have to be winning by the time you get to 20 these days.

I would never be one to go striding over to any woman who caught my eye - after all, I'm the person who got to know my wife's parents before I plucked up the courage to talk to her.

Ever since I was a kid, I'd imagine that I was making a break to win the world championship.

I am not a superstar in Britain.

It is quite surreal when you go to places up the north, like Inner Mongolia, and you are getting mobbed at the airport.

I always liked to take on the middle pockets. They're much harder.

It's always been my weakness that my concentration tends to go when I get into scrappy frames.

I still enjoy a wee game of poker now and then, but I'm not very good, and being Scottish, I don't like to lose that much money!

In both snooker and poker, you have to play your best under pressure; I was always able to do that. I don't think it is something you can teach. Your mental strength, your confidence, your self-belief has got to be very strong. That is the common denominator.

Ronnie O'Sullivan is the only player in history to be dominant and popular at the same time.

My form's good in practice, but that doesn't count for anything, really.

I love playing in China. The crowds here value success more than British people seem to.

In snooker, it's very important to keep very still on the shot and allow the cue to do the work.

Even as a boy, my dad always told me, 'Don't show emotion.' If I banged my cue, he would give me a row and say, 'Stop that.' Don't show any petulance. It was developed, certainly, but I think you have got to have it in you.

I am not on tour any more, but I hear things, and there are stories that some players are not as dedicated as they should be and treating some of these PTC events in Europe as stag weekends rather than tournaments.