Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.

It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into.

People refer to 'the good ol' days', but I don't know what they're talking about. As someone who's battled cancer, if I lived more than 20 years ago, I'd be a dead man.

Your past forms you, whether you like it or not. Each encounter and experience has its own effect, and you're shaped the way the wind shapes a mesquite tree on a plain.

There was more happiness in the process, in the build, in the preparation. The winning was almost phoned in.

Losing and dying: it's the same thing.