“I am 26 and, and I don’t recover as fast as I have in the past.”

I have reached a place in my life where I need to sit down and say, ‘Well, what do I do? What’s best for me?’ I need to look into options for the future.

Swimming is normal for me. I’m relaxed. I’m comfortable, and I know my surroundings. It’s my home.

Any Olympic sport is great to watch.

This is my 20th year in the sport. I’ve known swimming and that’s it. I don’t want to swim past age 30; if I continue after this Olympics, and come back in 2016, I’ll be 31. I’m looking forward to being able to see the other side of the fence.

I’m so sick of the water.

Once I retire, I’m retiring. I’m done.

I know it won’t be eight medals again. If you want to compare me to that, that’s your decision, not mine. I’m going out there to try to accomplish the things that I have in my mind and in my heart.

I want to go to the World Cup. I want to go to the Masters. I want to go anywhere.

The more you dream the more you achieve.

I eat pretty much whatever I want. I don’t have a strict diet. It’s all about cramming in as many calories into my system as I possibly can.

I want to continue the sport of swimming. I’m not going to give up until I think it’s reached where I want it to go.

I think the biggest things I am looking forward to is getting new faces into the sport. Getting kids who could be afraid of water to feel comfortable in the pool.

I think everybody pees in the pool. It’s kind of a normal thing to do for swimmers.

Even in high school, I’d tell my mom I was sick of swimming and wanted to try to play golf. She wasn’t too happy. She’d say, ‘Think about this.’ And I’d always end up getting back in the pool.

I try to separate my personal life from swimming.

I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you put the work and time into it. I think your mind really controls everything.

Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.

Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.

For schizophrenia, the recovery rate with drug therapy is under 15%. With nutritional therapy, the recovery rate is 80%.

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children.

Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society’s hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.

You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.

Advent allows us to recover during this four-week journey. It begins four Sundays before Christmas all the way up to Christmas. It lets us breath in those moments of faithfulness and helps us recognize that God is working.

People are hurt in love affairs and never recover, more than a boxing match.