There was a policy at Hughes against drinking at lunch, but the men ignored it

No one can avoid a challenge in life without breeding regret, and regret is the arsenic of life.

By the time I got home at night, my eyes were so chlorinated I saw rings around every light.

I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit

I always felt that if I made a movie, it would be one movie; I didn't see how they could make 26 swimming movies.

No one had ever done a swimming movie before so we just made it up as we went along. I ad-libbed all my own underwater movements.

I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.