If you're a champion, you have to have it in your heart. You can have the greatest coaches in the world, all the opportunities to play, and the greatest equipment, but if you don't have it inside, you're not going to make it. On the other hand, if you don't have any of those luxuries but you have heart and courage and the guts to go out there and grind it out, then you'll make it.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.

You pay a price for everything in life.

Of all my achievements in tennis, I'm probably as proud of my record on clay courts as any of my Wimbledon, U.S. Open or French singles titles.

In tennis, at the end of the day you're a winner or a loser. You know exactly where you stand... I don't need that anymore. I don't need my happiness, my well-being, to be based on winning and losing.

Don’t let a first-set victory lead into a second-set slump

Every time, all the time, I'm a perfectionist. I feel I should never lose.