You need flawless balance on the recovery. You need white hot focus and the concentration to row square blades cleanly for seven miles. Smooth water doesn't hurt either.

As you become more proficient, fewer people can offer you advice, although in truth, that's when you need it the most because the stakes just keep getting higher and higher.

Big guys like you and me aren't allowed to whine.

Racing shirts should be sold on big, thick rolls like paper towels.

Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain.

Long live the elite rower's motto:'early to bed, early to rise, never meet the regular guys.'

MCP, maximum controled pressure. No tomorrow, no waiting, nothing beyond the moment. We seek the perfect balance-total abandon on the drive, total control on the recovery.

I never realized how many holidays encroached on the collegiate training schedule. When I was training for the Olympics, only one holiday interested me, the Day After the Games.

After hooking up the fuel line and pumping a little gasoline through the hose, I prepared for a workout on the 'coach's ergometer'.

As my mother used to say: "Mimic a duck act calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like crazy underneath."

There's something beautifully soothing about a fact — even (or perhaps especially) if we're not sure what it means.

The world is going mad at an accelerating rate and television is the Typhoid Mary of this madness.

If the majority doesn't laugh at you, beware that you must be saying something wrong. When the majority thinks you are a fool, only then is there some possibility of you being a wise man.

It is necessary for men to be deceived in religion.

With a lot of songs on this record, one verse doesn't relate to the next verse. I don't think that one day really relates to the next day in life.

Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.

The American people don't want Obamacare. It has been forced on the American people, despite the fact that Democrats no longer control the House.

The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.

The full moon - the mandala of the sky.