Every morning, just like in Alabama, I got up with the sun, ate my breakfast even before my mother and sisters and brothers, and went to school, winter, spring, and fall alike to run and jump and bend my body this way and that for Mr. Charles Riley.

Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.

I'd noticed him watching me for a year or so, especially when we'd play games where there was running or jumping.

Well, I couldn't play an instrument. I'd just stand up front and announce the numbers. They had me sing a little, but that was a horrible mistake. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. We played black theaters and nightclubs all over hell. One-nighters. Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Earle Theater in Philly - That was big time for blacks.

One day or another every athlete feels like taking it easy. He stops trying to exceed his limits, and thinks he can keep winning because of his lucky star, or the bad luck of his opponents. You must overcome this negative instinct, which affects all of us, and which is the only difference between the person who wins a race, and those who lose. This is the battle you have to fight every day of your life.

Although I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either.

To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.