It might have been easier to retire, to say my knee couldn't handle it and let that be that. At the same time, the prospect of not being able to compete in gymnastics anymore was heartbreaking.

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.

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

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.

The catchers delight in the moment so frozen but soon discover that the nightingale expires, its clear flutelike song diminishes to silence, the trapped moment grows withered and without life.

She had spells of manic loquaciousness, followed by days of silence.

When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves.

You can actually be intimate with the universe.

To write is a humiliation.

This middle-budget drama movies are just gone.

Repetition is the mother of education.

Sorry, but we live in a democracy and the Government has to be responsive to Parliament.

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.

It sounds very pretentious, but I don't lie. It's too uncomfortable. A lot of people think because you're an actor that makes you a good liar, but one of the things I can't articulate is a bad lie.