When I see my mom in the stands, it always pushes me to succeed.

If you have done something once, you can do it again or you can do it better. The beauty is the pursuit of the limit, not the limit itself. At least that's what I hope people realize.

I want to see where I measure up against everyone in the world and everyone who has ever competed in the sport, and there's that innate sense of wanting to challenge myself. I'm competitive in all aspects.

I won't back down. I get a satisfaction from being tested and defeating the test.

You can't really explain competing in Olympic event to someone. You can say, "Oh, that was really tough." And that literally means nothing to someone. If you can give some sort of comparison, because that's really all track and field is about any way....Usain Bolt runs a time and you get to see what everybody else's time is. It would just be interesting to compare Olympians to somebody who doesn't train their whole life.

I think a challenge for myself is to see how many times I can get above 9,000. That would be a good challenge.

Last year I was the favorite going into the world champs in Beijing, but I felt like I had to do something phenomenal in order to win. Instead of just having fun and competing, it became "I want to win so bad." But the person who wants it the most doesn't win. It's the person who executes. I still look back on that 200-meter race and say what the hell happened? I wasn't hurt, I wasn't sick, the conditions were perfect, and I ran like total crap.