Retiring was scary and it was tough to give up gymnastics, but so many great opportunities have come from it that I never expected.

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.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

Only a well-rounded intellect, a spirit nourished in the eternal sources of intelligence and culture, of justice and wisdom, is a safeguard against both indifference and skepticism.

You need to let little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.

Live simply, so that all may simply live.

You have to do everything to help your team out. I have the ability to rebound, so I might as well go and do it to help my team win.

Life is a kind of struggle. Life is a sort of fight.

Gossip lies nine times and tells a half truth the tenth.

It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can’t do is choose neither.

Peace is not just the absence of war. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith.

People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.