“I owe a lot to my parents.”

When I need to push myself, I think of all those nicely polished trophies waiting to be lifted up by the winner – and how that winner might be me.

I still love things that you don’t even need to pay for. Going to the beach and being around five of your friends and having a good time means so much more than going out and spending hundreds of dollars.

I’d like to have a family.

I definitely feel Russian inside, even when I’m in America I feel Russian.

I know many of you thought that I would be retiring today, but if I was ever going to announce my retirement it would not be in a downtown Los Angeles hotel with this fairly ugly carpet.

When I walk through that gate to the court, that’s my escape. I block out everything, good and bad.

I’d love to open a tennis school for children in my hometown of Sochi.

I’m not the next Kournikova-I want to win matches!

It’s easy to impress me. I don’t need a fancy party to be happy. Just good friends, good food, and good laughs. I’m happy. I’m satisfied. I’m content.

When I’m down or maybe when it’s close in the match, I feel like I’m still in it. I don’t feel like I’m letting down. Mentally, I’m still really, really tough.

When you’re going through tough moments, you never know when you’re going to have good moments.

My main goal is to stay healthy because when you’re injured you realise how lucky you are to have your health.

If I can create something that allows a woman to feel better – that is the true reward.

When you come off the court and you feel like you were losing the whole match, and all of a sudden you pulled it out, you know, it’s those moments that you feel you’ve trained for and you work hard for. Just lucky to get through.

That’s why we have journalists, for stats.

I can’t please everyone. That’s not in my J.D., you know, not in my job description.

When I started, I didn’t think I would become a great player. It was my passion; I had interest. My parents supported me. In that way, I continued.

I am an engineer by profession, but I knew I wanted to act. My parents always encouraged me, and when my father shifted to Mumbai for work for a brief while, I came along.

Why should I worry about the biological clock ticking? Saif is 10 years older. He should be worried.

We can’t stop our parents from dying, but we use the fear to remind us to spend more time with them.

Tracking my fear of exam results and the other branch fears that appeared led me to the root: fearing I couldn’t make my parents happy

There were many struggles, but my parents supported me a lot. Whenever I wanted anything, wherever I wanted to go, practice session etc., they were there for me.

Since I’m the youngest in the family, I sulk when my parents deny me something, although I come around when they explain why it was denied.

I heard endless conversations between my parents when I was going to sleep about how we would survive, how we would continue. All of them were about trying to make me better.