I'm not an overly ambitious person; I don't feel like I have to excel.

I always looked ahead.

If I win seven tournaments in a row, I get so confident I'm in a cloud. A loss gets me eager again.

Every time, all the time, I'm a perfectionist. I feel I should never lose.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.

I'm not an overly ambitious person; I don't feel like I have to excel.

Losing hurts me. I was determined to be the best.

Find something that you're really interested in doing in your life. Pursue it, set goals, and commit yourself to excellence. Do the best you can.

Ninety percent of my game is mental. It's my concentration that has gotten me this far.

You've got to take the initiative and play your game. In a decisive set, confidence is the difference.

If you're a champion, you have to have it in your heart.

I was very, very shy as a younger girl, just petrified of people. Tennis helped give me an identity and made me feel like somebody.

When I was younger, I was a robot. Wind her up and she plays tennis.

Being famous before you've formed your personality, before you have that self-esteem, is dangerous.

I love hiking in the mountains in Aspen. Breathing the clean, fresh air is great. Plus, it gives me a cardiovascular workout and firms my legs.

I still have this image: I can't be controversial, I can't say things.

I think team sports probably teach you more about giving - about being unselfish and being flexible.

I was labeled at a young age - Miss Unemotional, Miss Cool, and that would carry over to my press conferences.

I'm not getting within 20 feet of a married man ever again - not even talking to one!

Losing hurts me.

Not every child is cut out for an individual sport.

Relationships are give-and-take, and when you're a tennis player, you're certainly not giving. You have to be self-absorbed. It has to be about you.

Tennis helped give me an identity and made me feel like somebody.

To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.

When you're a famous, successful person at 16 years old, the rules change for you. Everybody is doing things for you to make life easier so you can go out and play. And I think you miss out on lot of growing up and a lot of reality checks.

You can't give up! If you give up, you're like everybody else.

You pay a price for everything in life.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment.

If youre a champion you have to have it in your heart.

Competitive toughness is an acquired skill and not an inherited gift.

I love hiking in the mountains in Aspen. Breathing the clean fresh air is great. Plus it gives me a cardiovascular workout and firms my legs.

Whatever your goal in life, be proud of every day that you are able to work in that direction.

Evening is a time of real experimentation. You never want to look the same way.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

You know, you have to have some inner philosophy to deal with adversity.

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.

There's a kind of immediacy that comes with being constantly connected that I don't really relate to in my generation.

The company accountant is shy and retiring. He's shy a quarter of a million dollars. That's why he's retiring.

It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself and extemporize a procedure to fit it than to get a good plan matured and wait for a chance of using it.

We're living in a time, unfortunately, where, you know, a lot of young men, particularly young men of color, being raised by single mothers. And their mothers so desperately want to connect with them, but I found, in talking with a lot of young men, that sometimes it's difficult.

When your burning desire for success is greater than your deepest fear of failure, you can create anything in your life!

When I was quite young, I dreamed of being a painter.

I feel like I experienced my 20s in all their glory and all their disastrousness.

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.

New Orleans, more than many places I know, actually tangibly lives its culture. It's not just a residual of life; it's a part of life. Music is at every major milestone of our life: birth, marriage, death. It's our culture.

I actually have a piece of the wardrobe of most of the characters that I've played. I always ask for something.

I hate Shakespeare. I think Shakespeare's rubbish.