I think there is more pressure at trials when you are trying to make the team and you have to come first or second, and you have to go under qualifying time.

You don't want to line up on the blocks and know you have not done everything you possibly can.

Swimming is one of the hardest sports.

Whenever you get a sharp pain, you need to back it off.

I think for most people it's hard to understand what it is about swimming - I mean, it's such a solo endeavour.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

The good news is that in every deck of fifty-two cards there are 2,598,960 possible hands. The bad news is that you are only going to be dealt one of them.

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

When I write lyrics, it's only when I'm angry or hurt or sad. So lyrically it's never really easy going. And the music is always really intense.

You have to be smart to play a dumb blonde over and over again and keep the audience's attention without extraordinary physical equipment.

I think to really be literate in nu shu you only need about 600 characters because it is phonetic. So you're able to then create many words out of one character.

We can't see and we can't reach the frontiers of our ignorance; we can only approach to it by extending our knowledge.

Why do our parents have the ability to make us feel like children even when our hair is graying and we have a mortgage that feels like a Third World debt? (135)

My goal with the Canadian border is the same goal I have for Japan and Korea.

The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid, and beautiful; but it soon fades away. The in memory of injuries is engraved on the heart, and remains forever.