I'm used to being under pressure... luckily I perform well under pressure.

I used to be a cheerleader, but fighting just seemed more, "me". So I went that route.

It's just such a blessing that I get to be paid for something that I'm in love with.

I like the wrestling and executing the throws. My dad was a wrestler and he showed me some of those techniques, too.

I want to go as far as it will take me. I would love to go pro, but if that doesn't happen, I am a gourmet chef and would like to open my own restaurant.

My father wanted me to learn self-defense, so I enrolled in the Academy and loved it from the start.

I don't go into a fight mad. I go into a fight like it's my birthday. I love what I'm doing.

Misfortunes make us wise

Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.

Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts...

The real triumph of civilization is the extent to which coercion is banished from human relations.

Centuries ago, human beings created marriage. Later, they looked to the sky and dreamt of traveling to the moon. Coincidence?

I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying.

God spoke to me.” Don't let the voice of the darkness, tell you that you are not worth that God would not speak to you. Don't let him tell you, you don't matter. God spoke to you.

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.

The Japanese put houses in among the trees and allowed nature to gain the ascendancy in any composition.

Tommy Hearns seemed like an indestructible machine, so to beat him, I think that was my defining moment, the pinnacle.