My dad worked several jobs to pay for my expense in skating.

There is no age, height, or weight requirement to skate. It is good exercise no matter what your age is. If you want to be competitive, most start young. But, I practice with many adult competitors.

And I love what I do and I love skating.

It was always fun to skate with Paul Wylie and Paul Martini.

Sometimes it was difficult to make friends and be social in school because I was always practicing while other kids were getting together and doing things. But it just made me closer to my family, and I realized that they would always be there no matter what.

My life has been a whirlwind since the '94 Olympics.

It is a process of finding the right music then planning a costume to fit that style of music.

My hobbies are painting, crafts, and I like golfing.

I took group lessons at a rink near my home. We first had to learn how to stand up on the ice wearing skates. Eventually we learned to move forward, but soon found out that it was not that easy to stop! So that was our next important lesson.

I won my first medal when I was nine years old. It was at the Boston Open.

I was a tomboy who liked to play rough just like my two older brothers. That's probably why I liked the athletic part of skating - especially the jumping!

I started skating when I was six years old.

I was thrilled one year when I was younger when not only did my brothers get hockey sticks for Christmas - but I did too!

My dad worked several jobs to pay for my expense in skating.

Even now, my husband Jerry, our son Matthew and I live only five minutes away from my parents home, and my brothers live about ten minutes away. It's been great having such a supportive family.

I worked also, doing things such as our paper route and, later on, waitressing.

I get to see the different sides of skating now which involves not only competing, but entertainment.

But it seems that the judging maybe they shouldn't at least see the practices all week long. That can taint the way they go into the judging and the outlook of what's going to happen, instead of just watching those four minutes and judging on those minutes alone.

My parents never pressured me to skate. They always said I could quit if I wanted to. They only expected me to skate when they had already paid for the expensive lessons. But, otherwise they said I could do what I wanted to do.

I think it's a lot harder for the pros to have a long career in ice dance and in pairs. It seems the singles have a little bit of a longer career.

It wasn't always easy getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to go to the rink. Sometimes I wanted to just go back to sleep.

But after a few minutes of convincing myself that I really wanted to go - telling myself that I love skating and that my coach is there waiting for me - I would get up and go. And my mother would always get up and eat breakfast with me!

I like to try all kinds of styles so it always challenges me and forces me to try to look different.

People are really sick of seeing the winner not win and what the public thinks should happen.

One of the things I like best about the Halloween show is that I change outfits about six times in the show. It is a lot of fun to play the different characters.

People would ask me why I was doing what I was doing - but I always told them that I just loved to skate. There was no other explanation.

Falling down became second nature and it really didn't bother me.

I do not have any pets. We travel too much.

Even now I can't describe why I love skating so much.

It was never about winning medals or being famous.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

It was tough at the time but when I was younger, my Dad. I would say my Dad, because without him I wouldn't have been here. I mean it was tough for me because he was really demanding. With him, it was never enough, you know, anything I did was never enough.

David and Dad didn't get along too well growing up. I mean we all got along, but it was harder on David, because David wasn't going to be the son that Dad wanted. But now they're like best friends.

Where I come from, you don't really talk about how much you're earning. Those things are private. My dad never told my mum how much he was earning. I'm certainly not going to tell the world. I'm doing well.

I feel lazy when I'm not working. I learned all my business sense from my dad. He always believed in me, and I think the last thing he said to me before he passed away was, 'I know you're gonna be OK. I'm not worried about you'.

And I love Mel Brooks. My Dad loved his movies, too, they're awesome, the kind of thing that if you're in for ten minutes, you're in for two hours.

My mom and dad met at UCLA when he as a captain in the Air Force and she was in her junior year.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.

My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.

I have to remind my dad, 'Journalists - no matter how many cigars they smoke with you - are not your friends, so don't talk to them.'

We came from a family where we ran our own small business. Our dad made his own products. We made our own sausages, our own meatloafs, our own pickles. Dad had to do everything himself. He had to figure out how to finance his business.

My dad was a carpenter and I would work with him during the summer and umpire on the nights I wasn't playing.

It was sort of just a family sport. My mom and dad were pretty keen golfers when I was young and so were my grandparents, and I just sort of tagged along with them.

My dad takes care of me as a manager and as a dad. That's his job, you know, to take care of me. He has my best interests at heart.

My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.

Joanna points her camera at a section of society unused to having cameras pointed at it. But I don't know about categorizing them in terms of class; I'm a bit wary of that. My dad is the son of a shipbuilder.

Now my dad is with me, traveling with me and a big part of this whole thing is I like to mix it up a little bit, you know. Who gets to take their father on a private jet across the country and stay in first class hotels? So we're enjoying it, but I'd stop if it's not possible.

It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people.