The more sleep you get in before the clock turns midnight, the more rested you feel no matter what time your alarm goes off.

I enjoyed every bit of my swimming career. I think that's the most important advice - to enjoy what you do

I love to swim. When I jump in the water, I feel like I'm 12 years old again. It's really funny how it does that to me.

At 4, I joined a summer rec team called the Sugar Bears.

For me, music makes my smile brighter during my workouts. It adds that extra something that motivates me to go further or work harder!

At the end of a marathon, it's going to hurt whether you're speeding up or slowing down. You may as well push.

The first mile is mental. The rest are all heart.

Preparing mentally takes more out of you than the physical aspect of it.

I slice up a ton of cucumbers, celery, carrots and red and yellow peppers. Keep them in your fridge so you always have something handy to curb your snack attack.

Indoor pools just don't seem as inviting to me.

When I was younger, I would eat everything.

Fight everyday for a better life.

Manifestation is a process by which we transform seemingly unrealizable imaginations to reality.

As an author, I breathe life into each and every character within the stories that I write. But it is the reader who gives them their souls.

Absolute prediction is completion . . . is death!

When the young woman leans over the sky, about to water the flowers as well as the weeds, her white front splits open until her milk runs.

My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are.

Traditionally parents have wondered what their teens were doing, but now teens are much more likely to be doing things that can get them killed.

Only a weak person needed someone else around all the time.

to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale.

The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints.