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

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.’

It’s about alleviating stress and controlling breathing. It’s about being balanced.

If we want to discover the full potential in our humanity, we need to celebrate those heartbreaking strengths and those glorious disabilities that we all have.

It’s an objective fact that I am a double amputee, but it’s very subjective opinion as to whether that makes me disabled.

Adversity isn’t an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It’s part of our life.

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

I’m not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me. You can’t possibly speak for a diverse group of people.

I said, ‘Well hopefully you could just call me Aimee. But if you have to describe it, I’m a bilateral below-the-knee amputee.’

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.