I'm so sick of the water.

I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you put the work and time into it. I think your mind really controls everything.

It's the Olympics. If you can't get up to swim early in the morning, don't go.

I don't like to be second in anything. I was trying, I just wasn't going anywhere.

Coming into tonight, I knew it was going to be a great race, ... In the 400, Laszlo put up a 4:10.1 earlier in the year, and so you expect him to put up a good time in (the 200). I knew Ryan was going to be fast coming off his short course season, and he's improved a lot since Athens, so I just wanted to go out there and relax a bit and go out there and do what I had to do.

Other nights ... I visualize to the point that I know exactly what I want to do: dive, glide, stroke, flip, reach the wall, hit the split time to the hundredth, then swim back again for as many times as I need to finish the race.

Perseverance, determination, commitment, and courage-those things are real. The desire for redemption drives you.