“If everything was going smoothly you would never build character.”

Since I was young, the artistic expression that fashion embodies has inspired me. It’s a way to communicate oneself.

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.

America is the only country ever founded on a creed.

I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.

All my movies are about strange worlds that you can’t go into unless you build them and film them. That’s what’s so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.

The whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it’s total crap to pretend it’s not.

The cinema is really built for the big screen and big sound, so that a person can go into another world and have an experience.

I was told I could break free if I wanted to. That my wings would mend with time. But how can I mend a part of me that was never built to weather a storm?

Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.

France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes.