“It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close.”

Running is real. It’s all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.

Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.

The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us.

The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers – weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there’s money inside. There’s where the power lies.

I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn’t in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I’d learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.

Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.

One chance is all you need.

If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.

It’s like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.

Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.

After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.

We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn’t have steak? Who had steak?

For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.

I decided I wasn’t going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.

It dawned on me with blinding brightness. I realized: I had jumped into another rare kind of stratosphere – one that only a handful of people in every generation are lucky enough to know.

When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now what’s the difference?

I’m feminine, but I wouldn’t say that I’m girly in any way at all.

Scent has become a way for me to differentiate characters.

The true Mason takes full responsibility for the condition of his character and ever strives for its perfection.

We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation.

Now, all the movies are for teenagers. It’s very difficult for an actress to find really deep, beautiful characters to play.

I am nice, yeah. I’m cool. But I’m no push-over. And if someone gets one over on me, they’ve done it when my eyes were closed, and it doesn’t happen twice.

The drug dealers, they sympathize with me. They see me as some sort of pathetic character.

I’m not a fan of anybody music who I feel like a sucka. I don’t listen to you. They play you in the club, you can have the #1 jam, but if I know your character, how can I listen to your music?