Black women . . . work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going. . . . They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.

I don't know why I run so fast. I just run.

My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.

The feeling of accomplishment welled up inside of me, three Olympic gold medals. I knew that was something nobody could ever take away from me, ever.

I thought I'd never get to see that. Florence Griffith Joyner -- every time she ran, I ran.

By the time I was 12 I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.

What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.