“I think younger players probably just think they are who they are-they don’t think about coming out. Unless you’re number one in the world, nobody cares, usually.”

I always respect right off the bat because we are human, but then over time you learn who the person truly is, just like they learn about you.

That’s why my place in the all-time rankings means so very little to me, because I know I won’t be anybody’s number one, and it’s that same old thing: if you’re not number one, then what does it really matter?

Men can have a huge turnover of sponsorship and still survive a lot better than the women. But the women’s ratings are better, at least at home in the United States than in the men’s tennis.

The most important words that have helped me in life, when things have gone right or when things have gone wrong are ‘accept responsibility.’

Winning comes down to who can execute under pressure.

You’ve got to win in sports – that’s talent – but you’ve also got to learn how to remind everybody how you did win, and how often. That comes with experience.

When I was playing, we didn’t have to compete against everybody in the world. Now it’s a truly global sport, so the competition’s much greater, just like it is for our children in every other area, whether it be in science or technology or whatever you talk about.

Don’t worry about what people say.

Being Number One isn’t everything to me, but for those few hours on the court it’s way ahead of whatever’s in second place.

Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity.

I knew after my first lesson what I wanted to do with my life.

Don’t go into debt and don’t spend a lot. It’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you spend.

Winning is very tangible, it’s very exciting, it’s very pleasing, but it’s momentary. If you can do things that last, that each generation can build upon, then that’s when you’re cooking.

Marriage isn’t a 50-50 proposition very often. It’s more like 100-0 one moment and 0-100 the next.

I like to see what future generations are thinking about.

Pressure is a privilege – it only comes to those who earn it.

Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality.

The number of choices you make in the event that you see on stage, those choices are sometimes largely determined by the rehearsal process and the experiments that you go through and the choices that you make in the rehearsal room, not in front of an audience.

Not all introductions worked well. Rabbits were an unmitigated environmental disaster. Unchecked by any natural predator, they bred at a staggering rate and chewed their way across vast areas of pastureland as well as any garden that came their way.

If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie.

I’ve met quite a number of people in my career, but I do have an extraordinary memory. And even though they may drift into the periphery of my memory, I can bring them right back when I need them.

Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression had been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden.

It’s a tough thing to know that when you’re making your album, you’re going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don’t. There’s just no rhyme or reason.