Relationships are give-and-take, and when you're a tennis player, you're certainly not giving. You have to be self-absorbed. It has to be about you.

To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.

You've got to take the initiative and play your game. In a decisive set, confidence is the difference.

My first U.S. Open I think was just very special for me because that was sort of the beginning of what was a 'Cinderella' story for me.

When I play, I'm boiling inside. I just try not to show it because it's a lack of composure, and if you give in to your emotions after one loss, you're liable to have three or four in a row.

If you're a champion, you have to have it in your heart.

Find something that you're really interested in doing in your life. Pursue it, set goals, and commit yourself to excellence. Do the best you can.

You can't give up! If you give up, you're like everybody else.

Competitive toughness is an acquired skill and not an inherited gift.

Whatever your goal in life, be proud of every day that you are able to work in that direction.

The difference is almost all mental. The top players just hate to lose. I think that's the difference. A champion hates to lose even more than she loves to win.

Love with a kind heart is what we can give to each other.

Sometimes we focus on the lyrics too much and forget to dance to the music.

Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.

The way in which we think of ourselves has everything to do with how our world sees us and how we can see ourselves successfully acknowledged by that world.

I don't say that I never feel fear before a performance, but I have learned to channel it.

Being yourself is one of the hardest thing because it's scary you always wonder whether you'll be accepted for who you really are.

A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see once-not oftener.

It’s hard to think of another field in which experience is considered a liability and those who know the least about the nuts and bolts of an enterprise are embraced as experts.

It's very powerful if you can home in on, and really trust, intuition and its strength. Most men have shunned that in so many ways that they end up squaring off the circle of life.

One of the old philosophers says that it is the part of wisdom to sometimes seem a fool; but in our day there are too many ready-made ones to render this a desirable policy.