I was always trying to be leaner and thinner to fit the standard and the mold.

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.

Surely Tillie knew glitter on wrinkled cleavage was a sin.

My best evenings are at home with my lady.

To an untrained eye, need and love were as easily mistaken for each other as the real master's painting and a forgery.

A free and stable Iraq will be a shining light against the shadow of Islamic extremism.

There has never been a boy painter, nor can there be. The art requires a long apprenticeship, being mechanical, as well as intellectual.

Motor racing can never be totally safe and it never should be in my opinion.

What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter.

We are haunted by an ideal life, and it is because we have within us the beginning and the possibility of it.

I used to fantasize that Paul McCartney would marry my sister.

Fear is not your enemy. It is a compass pointing you to the areas where you need to grow.