It is much harder to retain your position at the top than to get to the top.

In athletics, older runners tend to go for longer races, but it's the opposite in swimming because your body can't handle the endurance.

There are younger, stronger swimmers coming up and they are hungry. I can't influence what they do, I only know what I can do and I know how greedy I am to defend my title.

I have always stayed out of politics, I don't believe it would be appropriate to talk about it.

We have potential. Who needs medals? I'd rather have potential than medals any day.

God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.

Every person gets negative things, they learn from those negative things, and you become a positive person.

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.

The one self- knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.

I was a hangover of that era where they’d say “Take off that medal! Is that a St. Christopher medal? You’re going to lose your audience with that.”

You missed the shadow of the hawk on the vole if you think how wonderfully free a vole is!

I think the media spends a lot of time fooling itself.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

I love being in a band. I love that collaborative spirit, although some would suggest that I don't get involved in the collaborative spirit, but it's not true.