"When you're young, you don't think very far ahead. You just think in terms of the next day, the next week, the next competition. You don't think about injuries that could threaten your long-term health."

"I started the class late. The teacher said I would have to learn as much in half a year that the others learned in a year. I did it."

"Sometimes I even now feel like a stranger in my country. But I knew there would be problems because I had seen the world as a skater. And now? A lot of people in eastern Germany have lost jobs, rents went up, food costs went up, unemployment went to 20 percent. Freedom is good, but it is not easy."

"The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists."

"There aren't many downsides to being rich, other than paying taxes and having relatives asking for money. But being famous, that's a 24 hour job right there."

"There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor, hungry, uneducated and without health coverage."

"A majority, perhaps as many as 75 percent, of abortion clinics are in areas with high minority populations. Abortion apologists will say this is because they want to serve the poor. You don't serve the poor, however, by taking their money to terminate their children."