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

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.

The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.

I didn't know at the time that the energy that I was giving off was like a battle Emcee.

It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.

The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.

That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter.

Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon.

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.

There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not bleeding.

Politics is about winning. If you don't win, you don't get to put your principles into practice. Therefore, find a way to win, or sit the battle out.

A critic is someone who never actually goes to the battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded.

Christianity is a battle not a dream.

Our main battle has always been against Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers.

From each one of them rose separate columns of smoke, meeting in a pall overhead, and through the smoke came stabbing flashes of fire as German shells burst with thudding shocks of sound. This was the front line of battle.

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

During the past few years I have led a sometimes hard battle for German foreign policy.

We don't consider the battle has ended in Afghanistan... The battle has begun and its fires are picking up. These fires will reach the White House, because it is the center of injustice and tyranny.

Usually in a battle sequence when a bomb is going off, you forget you're acting.

And then there's all these other creeps that surround your band and suck off you like leeches and try to manipulate you and your business. You have to watch like a hawk. I'm always ready to fight. I see it very much as a battle.

When a battle for suffrage is conducted, it should only be conducted according to socialist principles, and therefore with the demand of universal suffrage for women and men.

I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.