Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As an athlete and as a woman, I get my confidence from playing sports because it shifts your focus from what your body looks like to what your body can do for you. That's what we all should be doing. It shouldn't be about looking perfect.
Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work. I had to put in the time to get back. And it was a grind. It meant training and sweating every day. But I was completely committed to working out to prove to myself that I still could do it.
Well, you know, I've bonded with a lot of people over the years, you know. We played the same tournaments year after year and we go back to the same place and many times the seats have been full and that has meant the world to me for sure.
When you're a famous, successful person at 16 years old, the rules change for you. Everybody is doing things for you to make life easier so you can go out and play. And I think you miss out on lot of growing up and a lot of reality checks.
One of the most obvious reasons to start using timber rather than concrete is that it's the one commonly grown and therefore exceptionally renewable building material that we have available to us. And it acts as storage for carbon dioxide.
In your career you have a lot of good moments and bad ones. The important thing is to have enough motivation to keep working all the days with humility and trying to be a better player than before. I am going to try to continue doing this.
When one gets beaten by somebody better, one has to know how to lose with humility. Sure, I could have served better. Sure, I could have hit my forehand harder. But the truth was this was like an avalanche, and there was no way to stop it.
When I'm playing my best, like I was at the U.S. Open, I feel on top of the match and able to do exactly what I want. There are other times when you're not in control, but that is tennis and you have momentum changes in every single match.
I'm like a chameleon. I can kind of change and get my game going to whatever the situation is. If I play well, which I don't think I've even reached yet at all in this tournament, it's really hard for anyone on the women's tour to beat me.
Compared to my physique before pregnancy, yes, I do feel different. I have worked really hard and changed a few things - not only my fitness regime but also my nutrition. When I think about it, being pregnant definitely helped my physique.
The boys are so powerful off of the baseline now that they don't have to come to the net to finish points. That's the reason we went to the net. To finish the point. Nowadays, even the big guys can hit winners four feet behind the baseline.
I have a bit two overlapping personalities. I have my African half that gives me the hot blood and the warmth and the exuberance, and then I have my French side, which is quite a bit more reserved. It's not always easy to reconcile the two.
Nothing against the Olympics. I played in 2012 and it was an incredible experience. It's different for tennis players than for swimmers and track and field athletes. That's the pinnacle of their sport and not so much the pinnacle of tennis.
There was a line call that didn't look so great. I went ballistic. Called the umpire a jerk. Whacked a ball into the stands. Then smacked a soda can with my racket, and got soda all over the King of Sweden, who was sitting in the front row.
Whenever I have friends over, we end up eating and talking and losing track of time, and, once in a while, singing karaoke. It reminds me of the family meals we had in Russia, which always lasted a very long time. That's a tradition I miss.
There are still going to be great players that are baseliners. That's the way tennis - courts, balls, everything - has shifted. But everyone has to find their own way to win. Not everyone can run around the baseline for five hours. I can't.
There are periods when you feel really good. You feel the ball is bigger. The court is larger. You feel like you can't miss. And then there are periods when you feel, 'OK, I'm not feeling great.' But I still need to try to find a way to win.
I really like the smell of the tennis balls, the new ones. I don't need to do it, but it's just my habit, what I do on the court when we change for the new tennis balls. I just smell them. Maybe it's for luck. I've been doing it all my life.
I just travel all the time. And I was just looking at the schedules now and starting the first week of October I will be every weekend with somebody at tournaments through Christmas. So it gets very difficult to just go away and not do that.
Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?'
It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.
I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous, that I have decided to confront it head-on by talking to the press. I am frustrated and angry. I believe that I am absolutely, 100 per cent innocent. I assure you: I have never taken drugs.
When I speak to people I worked with when I was young, they constantly tell me they wish their students would work half as hard as I did. I was always one to get a lot more out of myself, seeing the glass as half-empty rather than half-full.
Seriously, I am not a person that I think much about what happened or what didn't happen or what could happen. I happy about the things that happened to me. I'm a lucky person, for sure, for all the things that happened to me during my life.
Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didnt even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually.
One of the thrills of playing at the top tennis centres of the world is to see the Indian flag go up whenever I'm participating in these events. That's enough motivation for any Indian who has the opportunity to perform at these tournaments.
As I said this year, I didn't try to put any pressure on me by setting high goals or anything, I just want to make sure that every single time I'm out there on the court I do my best, I give 100%, and see where it's going to end up next year.
That's what I've been always saying, that I was always using the mixed doubles especially to improve my net game and being able to return a guy's serve, 'cause then when you play someone like Serena, you are little bit more prepared for that.
When I come to London, it is always quite relaxing for me in a way, not just because it is one of my favourite cities but because it comes immediately after the French Open, which for me is a very significant tournament with lots of pressure.
Being black only helps them. Many times they get sponsors because they are black. And they have had a lot of advantages because they can always say, 'It's racism.' They can always come back and say, 'Because we are this color, things happen.'
I haven't accomplished everything that I want to yet in my career, that's why I'm still playing. I just know that I still have something left inside of me to accomplish, and I don't know exactly what that is. Hopefully, I'll know one day soon
At age 12, or even eight or nine, athletes were my role models. So when I would say I wanted to be the best, it was just because I was seeing my idols and wanted to do that. I don't think it necessarily was the most realistic thought process.
Players who win on a clay surface are those who can control the ball, playing steadily and accurately from the back-court, keeping the ball in play and moving it around with changes of speed and spin, and resisting the temptation to over-hit.
Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didn't even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually.
I never count calories. Counting calories is stressful and intimidating, so I avoid it! I know that if I'm eating something that's a treat, I don't need to count it because I mostly eat healthy and am conscious of what I'm putting in my body.
The coming revival must begin with a great revival of prayer. It is in the closet, with the door shut, that the sound of abundance of rain will first be heard. An increase of secret prayer with ministers will be the sure harbinger of blessing.
No woman ever lived who could compete with a man on an equal basis - even a 55-year-old man. There's a lot of talk about Women's Lib. They feel they're worth as much as the guys, but they can't play a lick if they can't beat a 55-year-old guy.
If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.
Rational egoism is the only morality that is for human life; thus, it is the only morality that is actually moral. Those who choose to be rationally self-interested thereby make the most of their life - and they are morally good because of it.
I see it as a compliment to be compared to someone like Sharapova who has won five Slams. She's a great champion. I see it in a positive light. But also I'm my own person. I don't want to be the next someone else. I want to be the first of me.
I think if you look at Andre then and now, you look at two different models. Of course it's personal preference, I think Andre now is a great role model for the kids. He has started training differently than he was before, and so on and so on.
I really try not to read the tennis articles, because a lot of times they're guessing at how a player is feeling, and I like to keep myself kind of open minded about how I'm feeling, rather than have someone else explain to me what's going on.
When you play a big server, you are under enormous pressure on your own serve because you cannot afford to be broken. That causes a lot of players to panic: you see double faults or tentative serves. It's all in the mind, but it still happens.
I came to live in a country I love; some people label me a defector. I have loved men and women in my life; I've been labeled the bisexual defector. Want to know another secret? I'm even ambidextrous. I don't like labels. Just call me Martina.
Ted Cruz, if he's elected president, the first thing he will do is return Don't Ask Don't Tell and roll back same-sex marriage laws. Which is law - hello - you can't really take it away. It's really terrifying the direction we're going in now.
I haven't accomplished everything that I want to yet in my career, that's why I'm still playing. I just know that I still have something left inside of me to accomplish, and I don't know exactly what that is. Hopefully, I'll know one day soon.
My parents wanted me and my siblings to practice some sports outside school. And since we lived next to a tennis club, we decided to play tennis. I didn't have an idol, so to speak, but I always enjoyed watching Pete Sampras and Alex Corretja.
I would say, hand on heart, I probably had a very good relationship with the press. The tennis journalists that followed me throughout my career... sure, you know, we had a few bumps in the road, if you like, but that's what you're paid to do.
For me, it is easy, I love sport. Tennis is something I enjoy. I love playing tennis. For me, working out is pure pleasure, every day if I could play tennis, I would love it. I have been doing this since I was 2 1/2-years-old, it is quite easy.
I spend days on my Xperia logging on Facebook chatting with my friends and family at home; I love listening to Rihanna and Pink and watching movies. Basically, anything that makes me smile, but most of my fans will know that I am always smiling!