"I have three messages," said the breathless Nyad."One is we should never ever give up. Two is you are never too old to chase your dreams. And three is it looks like a solitary sport but it takes a team."

Just getting in the pool for seven straight hours is unbearable to me.... It's grueling. There's nothing physically pleasurable about it. If you're doing a hard workout, you're throwing up in the gutter. At night you cling to your pillow and just hope that your body revives before you have to go back and do it again.

From age eleven to age sixteen I lived a spartan life without the usual adolescent uncertainty. I wanted to be the best swimmer in the world, and there was nothing else.

I have an uncompromising relationship with my goals.

When you reach for the horizon, as I've proven, you may not get there, but what a tremendous build of character and spirit that you lay down. What a foundation you lay down in reaching for those horizons.

This journey has always been about reaching your own other shore no matter what it is, and that dream continues.

If you can just immerse yourself in your life, it doesn't matter what you do everyday. Just do it intensely. Be in it, so that when you go to sleep you're exhausted every night and you say, 'Whoa, I just couldn't have done any more with that day.'