Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The greatest thing about sports, to me, is just the crossover into everyday life.
I grew up a little girl in the Soviet Union playing at a small sports club. Tennis gave me my life.
Sports is one of the keys to my life. It definitely kept me out of a lot of trouble and gave me a lot of discipline.
Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues.
Even in school, I was that kid others tried to pull down because I was naughty and did well in sports and academics. Life has trained me well.
My greatest gift in life was being dyslexic. It made me special. It made me different. If I had not been dyslexic, I wouldn't have needed sports.
It's become another dimension to who I am. I don't think Sports Illustrated is going to be wanting me. But who cares? I'm at a different place in my life.
There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim.
People have called me Superman my whole life. In various sports, that seems to be the common theme. My favorite superhero is actually the Incredible Hulk. He's the only superhero that can't die.
In Romania, of course, gymnastics is among the most popular sports, and my parents had a dream of escaping the Ceausescu regime and giving their child a better life. So they came to the United States and put me in gymnastics.
In sports, you deal with disappointment often, but it's how you handle it and come back from it that shapes you. All these lessons are transferable to life and have really helped me with the adversities I've had to deal with in life.
Watching boxer Dingko Singh's performance at the Asian Games, Bangkok, where he won gold, was the defining moment. I was 15 and enjoyed sports more than anything else. Singh's performance changed my life and inspired me to follow boxing.