Without strength and courage it's really hard to perform at the highest levels of international figure skating, because you're alone on the ice and you only have seven minutes over two nights to prove yourself.

I was nine-years-old when I first put on skates.

I don't want to look back-I want to keep looking ahead. I'd hate for my defining moment to be my past.

Everything that I've ever been able to accomplish in skating and in life has come out of adversity and perseverance.

Refined indifference is a sports psychology precept: train like there's no tomorrow and then accept whatever happens. Once you step on the field realize that whatever is meant to be is meant to be.

So as an amateur Olympic competitor I loved criticism, because it made me better. But now as a professional I don't really know how to channel it or where to take it, so I don't take it quite as well.

Each movement is only learned after you've perfected the one before it.