Gymnastics, especially in my family, is more than a sport. It's our life, it's our careers, it's our family business.
The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.
When I broke my knee, no one cared how I was; they just wanted me to get better and come back to gymnastics to win more medals for their country.
Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena, but that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.
If you don't leap, you'll never know what it's like to fly.
There's so much denial in gymnastics. It's a beautiful sport but the other part is numbing. You become machinelike. They'll refute this, but I've been around it. I know.
Anybody could be as good as Nemov. Yeah, he's a great gymnast, but anyone can be that good.
We want and expect to win the silver or gold. A bronze would be a step back. In fact, we think it would be a put-down if we don't win the silver or gold.
[on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.
Please keep watching rhythmic gymnastics in spite of its situation. If you quit watching it, rhythmic gymnastics will not exist any longer. Your eyes are much more important than judge's are.
I'm very easy to see on the podium because everyone else is small!
When I was 3 my parents put me in gymnastics because I was a bundle of energy and they just didn't know what to do with me! They put me in a Tots class and I just fell in love with it.
When it comes to gymnastics, you can be 30 points ahead going into that competition, but on that day, it's all about luck. It's about who has a good day, who stays healthy, it's how happy the judges are that day, there are so many different factors.
I think I spent all my life in gymnastics. And if you will ask me I want to change something in your past life, no. I will go same.
At the Olympics, there was a little bit of unfair judging, but I tried not to be disappointed and to do my best. I think the audience respected and loved what I did at the Olympics, and that helped me become the world champion in 1997.
I was a rhythmic and athletic gymnast for a little while. Then, when I quit gymnastics, I fell in love with yoga. So sometimes I think I'd like to open up a yoga studio.
The eyes of a young girl can tell everything. And I always look in their eyes. There I can see if I will have a champion.
At the beginning, ballet accounted for at least two hours out of six hours of my daily training session. Later I devoted less time to ballet, but every workout of mine included training in choreography.
Because I'm little, I think the audience likes me.
With gymnastics, I know I was making some people in that world mad because they thought that I wasn't focused on gymnastics. They were like, 'Ugh, she won't get off social media, she's always tweeting.' They wanted me to be America's sweetheart. And I think I've never fit into that cookie cutter person.
Gymnastics, you get one shot; acting, it's like, do it again, do it again, do it again. So that was the one thing that I found very different. You're allowed to get different tries and you're more expressive in a way when you're working with people. In gymnastics, you're so on your own and individual.
As far as technique and virtuosity are concerned, I think I am better than Bilozerchev.
We usually spend one hour per week on ballet but Marta Karolyi has us do a lot of compulsory floor in the morning practice.
Gymnastics does take great focus and concentration. What I do is look to my coach. He keeps me focused. And I meditate to get myself confident before the competition floor. That helps keep me focused, too.
I took lessons for about everything you could imagine - gymnastics to karate to flute and piano. My mom always definitely kept me in some kind of class or program, but for guitar, I kinda gave up on then kinda just taught myself. Same thing with piano. I've never been good with following lessons.
