People come out to see you perform and you've got to give them the best you have within you.

I decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.

"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."

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

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

It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards.

I always loved running.... It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.