I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability, it was my mental ability.
Fear is part of the process. If you weren't scared, you'd be in trouble.
If you're going to dedicate every second to winning the decathlon, what are you doing wasting your time in bed?
We put so much pressure on kids to excel in school at such a young age.
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.
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.
Nobody has milked one performance better than me - and I'm damned proud of it.
I was growing up in the 50's and 60's. Back then they didn't even know what dyslexia was.
I spent twelve years training for a career that was over in a week. Joe Namath spent one week training for a career that lasted twelve years.
If you are dyslexic, your eyes work fine, your brain works fine, but there is a little short circuit in the wire that goes between the eye and the brain. Reading is not a fluid process.
The biggest problem with dyslexic kids is not the perceptual problem, it is their perception of themselves. That was my biggest problem.
