Gymnastics taught me everything - life lessons, responsibility and discipline and respect.

As long as you've done your best, making mistakes doesn't matter. You and I are human; we will mess up. What counts is learning from your mistakes and getting back up when life has knocked you down.

Stay strong. Stand up. Have a voice.

I have a chaperone everywhere I go - my mom.

My approach to gymnastics in Beijing was heavily based on the amount of difficulty I could do.

I still can't believe I'm an Olympic athlete.

The body is an amazing machine... If you eat the right things your body will perform incredibly well!

To have any doubt in your body is the biggest weakness an athlete can have. There are times when I physically can't get myself to go for a skill because I'm thinking, 'My knee hurts really bad.'

Image isn't everything, It's what comes from your heart, and what you learn and what you say and how you act that means more than anything.

I don't call them sacrifices. I call them exchanges.

I had surgery to repair the ACL in February 2010 and was back in the gym by June, but rushed things too quickly and ended up re-tearing my MCL in September.

The idea that 20% of the features will get you 80% of the value may well be correct, but it also means that on important tasks, you're giving the customers B-grade experieence where it matters most.

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.

A story ... has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.

The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later.

There is too much repression and suppression in schools.

Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.

The first things to study are form and values. For me, these are the things that are the basics of what is serious in art.

For an American president to be aiding America's enemy in developing nuclear weapons technology is unprecedented, absolutely.

There will be water if God wills it.

It's not that I'm racist or anything, because I'm not, but I just don't think we should be wasting our time helping people that are going to die soon anyway.