The kind of hope I'm talking about is the belief that something good will come. That everything you're going through and everything you've gone through will be worth the struggles and frustrations. The kind of hope I'm talking about is a deep belief that the world can be changed, that the impossible is possible.

That's why I love fighting, because I get to have a big battle every couple months to make up for the little battles I have to forfeit every day

The whole 'bad girl' thing allows me to mess up sometimes. And I have freedom to say more of what I want to.

For me, MMA is like speed chess. It's like I'm herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an arm bar. I'm not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I'm going to do is convince you that it's a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go.

Sports Illustrated is very serious about their covers. They'll never say, like, 'Oh you got it.'

The thing that gets me up in the morning is that I’m really not ready to see someone that I know I can beat holding my belt.

A belt does nothing but hold your gi together. A belt has assigned significance, a belt is someone else saying you're good, you don't need other people saying that you're good in order to be good.