“Ups and downs are a constant in life, and I’ve been belted into that roller coaster a thousand times.”

I admire the ones who keep coming back and doing it, time after time.

It’s hard enough for women to walk on high heels. And I’m on stilts!

I don’t know what it’s like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy.

The idea of prosthetics is a tool. Most people’s cell phones are prosthetics. If you leave your cell phone at home.

I have learned not to overlook the advantages of being me. From when I was a softball player, and I held the stolen bases record.

Success means doing as excellent a job as you can on that particular day. The people I admire most aren’t necessarily the most wonderful athletes.

You amputate part of a nose, that’s ‘enhancement’. You put a prosthetic in a breast cavity, that’s ‘augmentation’. But you amputate part of a limb and put a prosthetic there, it’s ‘disability’?

The only true disability is a crushed spirit

There’s an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not I’m disabled.

Success isn’t winning every time. A lot of different factors go into every race, and you can’t control all of them.

Belief in oneself is incredibly infectious. It generates momentum, the collective force of which far outweighs any kernel of self-doubt that may creep in.

I have no time for moaners. I like to chase my dreams and surround myself with other people who are chasing their dreams, too.

Truthfully, the only real and consistent disability I’ve had to confront is the world ever thinking that I could be described by those definitions.

True beauty is when someone radiates that they like themselves.

If you watch any John Hughes film of the eighties, that was my childhood experience.

Beauty is not skin-deep; it can be a means of self-affirmation, a true indicator of personality and confidence.