It really means a lot that I won the gold medal - but I woke up the next morning expecting to feel different. I felt the same.

The decathlon includes ten separate events and they all matter. You can't work on just one of them.

I always know where the scissors are.

And there is such a thing as a decathlon high. It's like a rock rolling down hill, picking up momentum. You get better and better.

It took me time to realize that the men who won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like me.

Try everything, because you're never sure what you're going to be great at.

To me, the decathlon is its own little society and I am part of that culture.

When I was little, I wasn't allowed to put sugar on my breakfast cereal because it made me so hyper.

Breaking the world record in '92 was a very special personal moment, but I'd say my favorite moment as a decathlete was winning the Olympic gold medal.

It's important for me to think I'm mixed-race.

You can only look forward to a South Dakota winter if, as with childbirth, remodeling a house, or writing a novel, you're able to forget how bad it was the last time.

In a way, by being fully committed to the Olympic movement globally, I'm better able to promote women's hockey and talk about women's hockey and put a face to women's hockey, to all the IOC members.

You disappoint yourself more often by not doing things because of cowardice and temerity than you ever did by doing things that turn out to be wrong.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it...

I've always been the kind of woman who had a man in her life even when he was the wrong man.

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.

Why do the faithful have such a will, to believe in something? And call in the name they choose, having chosen nothing.

I don't think it's sacrilegious to remake any movie, including a good or even great movie.

You have to put yourself in a situation, a lifestyle, that makes you do the work. Even if it's a monastery.

I eventually found that the soul is more than an immortal commodity to win and save. It is the repository of the inner divine, the truest part of us.

As with any true artist, change is the only constant.