“When I watch Mad Men and I see the patronising attitudes to women that are so shocking for all of us to watch now,”

The Pentagon isn’t a place that champions individuality and innovation.

It is our humanity, and all the potential within it that makes us beautiful.

I haven’t had an easy life, but at some point ,you have to take responsibility for yourself and shape who it is that you want to be.

I’ve had journalists asking me, ‘What do we call you – is it handicapped, are you disabled, physically challenged?’

I’m not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me.

At some point in every person’s life, you will need an assisted medical device – whether it’s your glasses, your contacts, or as you age and you have a hip replacement or a knee replacement or a pacemaker. The prosthetic generation is all around us.

I had a paper round and every night I would put the dinner on before Mum came home from work. I was capable because I had to be.

When I’m curious about something, I do it full on and take it as far as I go, but when I feel like I’ve really explored it, I’m OK with putting it aside and going on to something else.

An athlete experiences the emotions of pain and elation through triumph and defeat, through teamwork and individuality, as nothing more than a human being…that is the true glory of sport.

Giving up is conceding that things will never get better, and that is just not true.

I hate the words ‘handicapped’ and ‘disabled’. They imply that you are less than whole. I don’t see myself that way at all.

The power of the human will to compete and the drive to excel beyond the body’s normal capabilities is most beautifully demonstrated in the arena of sport.

In athletics, the idea of possibility is presumed. It’s not ‘if;’ it’s ‘how.’

I’m not running around as a continual ray of sunshine. It’s just I don’t believe in wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Get over it.

Sure, I’d love to have children some day. But world domination comes first.

I think that everyone has something about themselves that they feel is their weakness… their ‘disability.’

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.

If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.

I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

Guys are kind of retarded until they’re about 30.

Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they are now. When we’re mad at people, we’re angry because of something they said or did before this moment. By letting go of the past, we make room for miracles to replace our grievances.

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.

With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.