If you're paid before you walk on the court, what's the point in playing as if your life depended on it?

Some folks call tennis a rich people's sport or a white person's game. I guess I started too early because I just thought it was something fun to do. Later, I discovered there was a lot of work to being good in tennis. You've got to make a lot of sacrifices and spend a lot of time if you really want to achieve with this sport, or in any sport, or in anything truly worthwhile.

Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.

I have tried to keep on with my striving because this is the only hope I have of ever achieving anything worthwhile and lasting.

I take the good with the bad, and I try to face them both with as much calm and dignity as I can muster.

I accepted the face that as much as I want to lead others, and love to be around other people, in some essential way, I am something of a loner.

We blacks look for leadership in men and women of such youth and inexperience, as well as poverty of education and character, that it is no wonder that we sometimes seem rudderless.... We see basketball players and pop singers as possible role models, when nothing could be further, in most cases, from their capacities.