I would watch Gonzalez play and he mesmerized you. It would be like looking into the flame of a fire. You know you couldn't take your eyes off him because you never knew what he would do next.

No, like I said, my dad was never really part of the tennis. His involvement around what I did with the tennis and with my mom and my grandparents was really not a part of my life.

Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.

Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.

I would watch Gonzalez play and he mesmerized you. It would be like looking into the flame of a fire. You know you couldn't take your eyes off him because you never knew what he would do next.

For the last five or six years the most important thing in my life has been my family.

People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.

From where we lived, to practise in St Louis was an hour-and-a-half drive each way, so that took a lot of the time. So really, our lives just took different paths.

Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.

Bjorn was a different breed, I threw my best material at him, but he would never smile, but that added to the charm when he played me and Mac. We were going nuts and losing our mind and he was sitting back like he was on a Sunday stroll.

I hate to lose more than I love to win.

Every time I went out there I performed the best that I could and it was time to step back and clear my mind.

You have to remember that I played longer than anybody else on the main tour; I played until I was 40, and then played another six years or so on the seniors tour.

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?

I was never part of the crowd.

Use it or lose it.

New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.

I always insist on my jeans being ironed. Is that a problem?

I had true rivalries. Not only did I want to beat my opponent, but I didn't want to let him up, either. I had a rivalry with Mac, Lendl, Borg. Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: 'This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry.' There were no hugs and kisses.

I think my greatest victory was every time I walked out there, I gave it everything I had. I left everything out there. That's what I'm most proud of. I can't go win Wimbledon anymore, so if what I've done in the past is not good enough, let it go. Because I'm certainly not sitting around thinking about it.

I was raised by two women, and that laid the groundwork for the way I treat 'em: with the utmost respect and admiration.

It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.

Playing in front of 25,000 people and millions more on television, and performing and doing what I worked so hard to try to accomplish was, in my opinion, the ultimate. Do I miss it? Of course I do.

Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?'

There was never anything I wanted to do more than play tennis. Never once walked out there and thought, 'I wish I was doing something else.' Not once.

With everything else that would swirl around me when I got involved in it, tennis was my main concern.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally.

Terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, in my eyes I have a very, very, very simple explanation. Gangs of criminals, killers, used unfortunately by certain governments in the past for political purposes, who are on their own now as gangs.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

Love is seeing without eyes, hearing without ears; hatred is nothing.

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

I keep my eyes clear and I hit 'em where they ain't.

They're just big in the eyes of the American public.

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

Young man, if God had wanted you to see me that way, he would have put your eyes in your bellybutton.

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness.

Model. Two mobile eyes in a mobile head, itself on a mobile body.

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.

You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.

A lot of the stuff that I do with Betty is in the eyes. A lot of the feelings that I evoke with her are unspoken, so that's been fun to play with.

Thou has a thousand eyes and yet not one eye; Thou host a thousand forms and yet not one form.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.