If just one person, one child who is made to feel isolated, looks at me and sees that it is okay to be your own person and walk down your own path, then everything I have ever gone through will be worth it.
I think I was more or less, convinced of that by just the press, the US press. By people who were pressuring you, saying that you gotta beat the Russian's, if you don't win anything else, win the Russian meet and so forth.
In some ways the ACL tear was a blessing. I had hesitated to return to elite gymnastics after the 2008 Olympics. I told myself I had already accomplished so much, and the road was just going to get harder if I continued.
With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.
You have to wonder at times what you're doing out there. Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.
'Man In The Mirror' by Michael Jackson - I used to have my very first dance parties with my kids to this song when they were little, even carried them around to it. It just makes you want to be a better person and be inspired.
When I got to college, I used to run on top of everything else, because when you gain weight in swimming, you have to do something else, like bike or run, to maintain the weight or take the weight off.
It almost hurts me to walk down a road and have people grab my hand and ask for my autograph and not sit and talk. When I'm finished I'm not going to be on the front page, but I'm going to be just as happy without the publicity.
My early novels were very understated and English. Fourteen years ago, I met and married my American husband, and as I learned more about his background and culture, I became interested in using American voices.
When you're competing, you have to wear a sleeve that goes all the way down to your wrist. When you're training, you usually don't wear long-sleeved leotards, so there's a difference between training and competing.
I really like crop tops. I like how you can dress them up or down, with jeans or a skirt and heels. I like to be showy and cute. I don't want to be in just a jacket and pants and boots.
There's a lot of stress out there, and to handle it, you just need to believe in yourself; always go back to the person that you know you are, and don't let anybody tell you any different, because everyone's special and everyone's awesome.
I didn't want people to think of me as someone who wasn't impressed with a silver medal, because obviously that's a huge accomplishment, and I was so happy. It was more about me just being not impressed with falling at the Olympics in my last event.
I've often had people ask me, would you allow a homosexual to be your friend. Yes, I will. And the reason I will is because I know that that person has problems, and if I can minister to those problems, I will.
I'm used to a very busy schedule. Right now it revolves around training and preparing for Nationals in January. I'm usually at the rink from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. and then I attend public school for two hours, three times per week.
I'm a different person off the court than I am on the court, where I'm very competitive, a perfectionist, and I can be hard on myself sometimes. Off the court, nothing really bothers me. I'm easy-going.
So, you know, if, if I wanted to get up and just play golf one day, I would just get up and play golf. If I wanted to go to Vegas, I would just get up and go to Vegas.
All things being equal, if we could simulate the same scenario, he has a lot more difficult task. He's elected to swim six individual events, as opposed to what I elected to do, which was four.
I was tempted my junior year to go out of college and forgo my eligibility. I had broken several world records. I did have a lot of people telling me that I should go pro.
My parents never pressured me to skate. They always said I could quit if I wanted to. They only expected me to skate when they had already paid for the expensive lessons. But, otherwise they said I could do what I wanted to do.
What I've learned from my own journey, and from my family's experience with cancer, is how important it is to stay positive and move forward. Not every day is going to be perfect; that's life. But staying positive is going to get you to the next day.
