“Ladies, here’s a hint. If you’re up against a girl with big boobs, bring her to the net and make her hit backhand volleys. That’s the hardest shot for the well-endowed.”

I think one of the concerns, anytime you’re in the human business, like sports, it’s a very high – risk endeavor.

A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.

You just know where to put the ball. You just feel it. It has been computed into your brain so many times ­ it is there.

If you have one gay experience, does that mean you’re gay? If you have one heterosexual experience, does that mean you’re straight? Life doesn’t work quite so cut and dried.

When you oppress people either by gender, by race, by sexual orientation, when you do that and the doors become ajar, they will fly open and they will come and they have.

I always listen, I ask children, I even ask adults in tennis, “What are your children playing?” And most of the time it’s not tennis. It’s pathetic.

Ask Nureyev to stop dancing, ask Sinatra to stop singing, then you can ask me to stop playing.

There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim.

Sports are a microcosm of society. It just shows how much more competition there is in the world.

Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn’t allowed in a photo because I wasn’t wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.

Men still get a lot more opportunity. It is still a big part of the old boy network… They have more companies they can get money from.

When a child signs up for tennis, he or she is put on a team. I put them in a circle and then I make sure they name their own team.

We have, or have had women presidents or prime ministers in Liberia, Chile, Germany, Great Britain…and yet the US of A still hasn’t had a women president. It’s just beyond my thinking. Look at Congress.

You have got to want to be the best before you can even begin to reach for that goal, and you have got to be prepared to sacrifice a lot to get there.

I would love to be a player today. I had the right personality for it.

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.

One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.

I’ll never forget that first night with the team. Going to the ballpark on the bus was the hardest 30 minutes of my life.

Love scenes are the hardest things in the world and if you enjoy them, that’s wonderful, because nobody making them sits there and goes, ‘Let’s do that again tomorrow.’

The hardest part about being a celebrity is having to heal on a public stage.

I have to say that elections, even in the most peaceful region, always make the hardest time for regional state institutions, including security structures.

The hardest thing to open is a closed mind.

As I often tell my students, the person you’ll have the hardest time opening to and truly loving without reserve is yourself. Once you can do that, you can love the whole universe unconditionally.