You give up your childhood. You miss proms and games and high-school events, and people say it's awful... I say it was a good trade. You miss something but I think I gained more than I lost.

For athletes, the Olympics are the ultimate test of their worth.

If I had a bad performance in a particular leotard, I threw it in the trash.

As a kid, I was a pretty good little sprinter.

Companies that support sports developmental programs in our communities should also be applauded.

That's because the International Olympic Committee has a policy of never replacing medals.

I usually don't mind giving autographs, but when hundreds of folks with paper and pen start coming at you, it's time to seek shelter.

Having a home away from the media glare is important to world-class athletes.

You give up your childhood. You miss proms and games and high-school events, and people say it's awful... I say it was a good trade. You miss something but I think I gained more than I lost.

Be cocky. Walk into the Georgia Dome like you own it.

Getting to know athletes from all over the planet is a big part of the Olympic experience.

Former Olympians also get paid to make appearances. Many of them won their medals in an era when Olympic success didn't go hand-in-hand with financial success.

Pay-per-view would deprive many kids of the delight of seeing the Olympics.

I love her attitude, but as much as I'd like to bring my medals to a speech or appearance, I never do.

It's going to be really weird when I'm 80 years old, in a walker, and people are still calling me America's sweetheart. We need a new one.

In L.A., we had a game room with a new sensation called Pac-Man.

In the dressing room, I always put on my right shoe first. Same thing for my right wristband.

For six years, I kept my five Olympic medals wrapped in a plastic bread bag beneath my bed.

Many athletes competing in Atlanta wouldn't be here if it weren't for corporate support.

Many medal winners dream of competing in a sport other than the one they're famous for.

Fragile egos are put on the line every day.

As simple as it sounds, we all must try to be the best person we can: by making the best choices, by making the most of the talents we've been given.

The endorsement game has been very good to me.

A trophy carries dust. Memories last forever.

Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive good things and good people will be drawn to you.

Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart.

Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It's our goal in life to find it and keep it.

Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.

Children possess a remarkable amount of passion. They throw themselves completely, heart and soul, into everything.

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

I don't carry any early childhood trauma around with me, if that's what you're hinting at. The story of the bicycles - and there were three of them which were stolen from me - I've dealt with it well.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

Well I was an asthmatic child. So that for most of my childhood I was in bed. Bedridden.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

I had a kind of Dickensian childhood.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.

I didn't have a happy childhood.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

My whole family actually, but my parents. I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I've been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don't talk about the business and I still have stuff to do at their house.