For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.

Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.

There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing - and we all face that battle every day.

"She (Minnie Ruth Solomon) was unusual because even though I knew her family was as poor as ours, nothing she said or did seemed touched by that. Or by prejudice. Or by anything the world said or did. It was as if she had something inside her that somehow made all that not count. I fell in love with her some the first time we ever talked, and a little bit more every time after that until I thought I couldn't love her more than I did. And when I felt that way, I asked her to marry me . . . and she said she would."

The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.

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

We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?