“When I make commitments I like to stick to them, especially when I’m giving back to kids. Just giving them an example of what they can achieve. I love giving back to kids. It’s fantastic.”

It’s pretty hard being a tennis player and Mother Theresa at the same time and that’s just the way it is.

My style when I was younger was still unique to me. I didn’t necessarily dress by the trends, but I was always aware of what was trendy at the time and how I could apply it to my own sense of style.

I’ve been very competitive by nature from a young age, whether it was eating a bowl of pasta faster than somebody else, or always wanting to be the first one in line.

When I need to push myself, I think of all those nicely polished trophies waiting to be lifted up by the winner – and how that winner might be me.

I still love things that you don’t even need to pay for. Going to the beach and being around five of your friends and having a good time means so much more than going out and spending hundreds of dollars.

I’d like to have a family.

I definitely feel Russian inside, even when I’m in America I feel Russian.

I know many of you thought that I would be retiring today, but if I was ever going to announce my retirement it would not be in a downtown Los Angeles hotel with this fairly ugly carpet.

When I walk through that gate to the court, that’s my escape. I block out everything, good and bad.

I’d love to open a tennis school for children in my hometown of Sochi.

I’m not the next Kournikova-I want to win matches!

It’s easy to impress me. I don’t need a fancy party to be happy. Just good friends, good food, and good laughs. I’m happy. I’m satisfied. I’m content.

When I’m down or maybe when it’s close in the match, I feel like I’m still in it. I don’t feel like I’m letting down. Mentally, I’m still really, really tough.

When you’re going through tough moments, you never know when you’re going to have good moments.

My main goal is to stay healthy because when you’re injured you realise how lucky you are to have your health.

If I can create something that allows a woman to feel better – that is the true reward.

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.

In 1995 I had $7 bucks in my pocket and knew two things: I’m broke as hell and one day I won’t be. You Can Achieve Anything!

Teamwork is really a form of trust. It’s what happens when you surrender the mistaken idea that you can go it alone and realize that you won’t achieve your individual goals without the support of your colleagues.

We work to become, not to acquire.

And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.

We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

Finding the right healing path requires all or nothing. Once you place conditions on healing, all you can achieve is conditional healing.

Never give up, no matter what may set you back, and know that at the end of the road, you’re going to have something that you can be proud of.