I'm saying goodbye to people's perception of me and who I am, I'm not saying goodbye to me, because this has always been me.
We put so much pressure on kids to excel in school at such a young age.
First of all, I try to be a positive role model.
The first one of the girls I ever told was Kimberly.
It caused more problems as a young kid, because the simple process of perceiving words on a piece of paper was hard for me. Many people think dyslexic people see things backwards. They don't see things backwards.
The most challenging aspect of the decathlon is not the events themselves, but how you train to become the best 100-meter runner you are on the same day that you're the best 1,500-meter runner.
If you're asking your kids to exercise, then you better do it, too. Practice what you preach.
I was afraid the teacher was going to make me read in front of class and I was going to look bad. [But] if I wasn't dyslexic, I probably wouldn't have won the Games. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily. And I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.
I was scared to death, but I made fear score points for me. Fear is right behind me, fear is six inches off my back, that's where fear is. I can feel its presence. But it's not going to catch me... I'm going to take fear and use it to my advantage.
The truth is everybody does it from time to time. People dial telephone numbers and they get a wrong number only to find that they've read the last two digits backwards. Everybody does it, but dyslexics have this tendency to a higher degree.
I didn't only have a perceptual problem, I was also so nervous and so upset. The process just didn't work. I lost enthusiasm for school and I flunked second grade. The teachers said I was lazy.
Our mission for younger people is to do our best to make exercise cool, hip - the thing to do.
Waving the flag at the 1976 Olympics wasn't my idea. It was too much apple pie and ice cream. Not that I don't love my country, but I felt it was my victory up there, I put all the time into it.
I'm not stuck in anybody's body. I'm me.
I just barely got through school. The problem was a learning disability, at a time when there was no where to get help.
There was a French activist and writer, Simone de Beauvoir, who said, 'You are not born woman. You become one' ... Words I live by.
If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, 'You just blew your entire life.'
A champion plays the game; a spectator observes, criticizes and never really gets to live. A champion knows what he or she wants and goes after it with carefully calculated goals and no-holds-barred action. A spectator feels that his or her life is not their own. They let others dictate their destiny. They become victims of life instead of masters of it.
What I'm doing is going to do some good and we're going to change the world.
I still have nightmares about taking tests.
I am not gay. I am, as far as I know, heterosexual. I've never been with a guy.
Bruce lives a lie. She is not a lie. I can't do it anymore.
Nobody has milked one performance better than me - and I'm damned proud of it.
I'm kind of more on the conservative side.
I was growing up in the 50's and 60's. Back then they didn't even know what dyslexia was.
