When I was growing in the Callope project, we had an oval parkway. Pavement ran around this whole thing. We'd skate or ride bicycles. There were benches and trees out there. It was paradise to us. They finished building it the same year I was born.
Aaron Neville
He really is terribly heavy going. Like running up hill in roller skates.
Alan Ayckbourn
When I was first starting out as a kid, I tried to pad my resume with everything I had ever done - ice-skate, carry a tune. I can't dance for my life, but I can learn, so I'll tell people I can dance. I play the piano - I'm a really good pianist, actually.
Alexandra Daddario
I literally tried every sport and was miserable. Soccer couldn't hold my attention. I couldn't figure skate. I'm afraid to swim. So I did dance for five years. It came a time where I was getting a little bit bored with it.
Alicia Sacramone
I actually got into music because of art and because of skateboarding: All those graphics and punk bands and fanzines - they were glued together in my brain.
Alison Mosshart
Being a figure skater myself and knowing what it took for my parents to get up at five in the morning to drive me to the rink before school and then drive me to practice after school - it's a huge commitment for any family.
Allison Janney
I've always been a figure skater and ballet dancer. I love physical comedy, and any chance that I get to do that... that is so me.
Before I even wanted to be an actor, I wanted to be a figure skater.
My father used to always give me a basketball, a skate board, and a bike every Christmas. That's all I wanted every year.
Amar'e Stoudemire
Pfizer's actually teamed up with my nonprofit organization, which is called Adaptive Action Sports. I cofounded this organization in 2005 to help people with physical disabilities get involved in action sports, go snowboarding, skateboarding.
Amy Purdy
Sometimes you want to skate along or just get by or fly under the radar, but sometimes you have to stand up and let your voice be heard and give it your best and give it your all. As a mother of young children, that's something I've tried to emphasize and highlight for them.
Angela Bassett
I have a scar on my left thigh, kind of almost near my knee. I essentially fell in the 2002 Olympics and when I hit the wall - because of the impact - my right leg kind of came in at like a knife-type angle and stabbed my leg with my own skate blade.
Apolo Ohno
I could never focus on my upper body as a skater, so I'm enjoying having symmetrical upper and lower body muscle.
Generally, speed skaters don't run that much. I'm a little bit of an exception in that I run a lot.
I was a snot-nosed teenage skater at one point, who listened to only punk records and hung around people that had that idea of what is okay to do and what isn't okay to do.
Ariel Rechtshaid
I think growing up in skating, I was surrounded by the LGBT community, so I grew up very aware because I was around it so often, and some of the kindest people I know are gay figure skaters.
Ashley Wagner
A lot of people who watch figure skaters want us to look like pretty princesses. I want people to see the athlete, and I want to look like a woman among girls.
Skaters are infamously superstitious.
I'm the type of skater that needs to stay upbeat and relaxed, open, because if I stay quiet, I get in my head, and then I start to think too much and start to doubt.
I'm a show pony, and I don't get to skate with girls doing triple Axels every single day. I skate with little babies who are working on their single Axels while trying not to hit them on the ice.
Some skaters, they live for skating, and they are home-schooled. I'm very lucky my parents let me go to school and have a normal life.
I know roughly when I skate a good program where the score should end up.
It is more important for us to get exposed so we can learn from it and build than skate through all these tournaments and never have any issues and then feel it in the World Cup.
Skateboarding teaches you how to take a fall properly. If you try to kickflip down some stairs, it might take you thirty tries - and you just learn how to take a tumble out of it without getting hurt.
I skate all the time, but it's silly for me to do contests when MTV is giving me a boatload of money.
Actually, I've always wanted to be a professional skateboarder ever since I was about six.
You can be a great skater, you can have really good puck skills, but the ability to problem-solve is, to me, key.
I've been watching the growth of Auston Matthews, for instance. If he were playing 20 years ago, we'd be saying he's Mario Lemieux-like. He's 6-foot-5. He skates great. He's got unbelievable hands and a hockey IQ.
My main concern when travelling around the world is finding a place to skateboard!
My kids, they're like nine or ten years old right now so you give 'em responsibilities just to keep them up on things. It ain't just all about getting on the skateboard or putting your Heelys on, and swimming in the pool all the time. You gotta do stuff like wash dishes, take the trash out, feed the dog.
We got skate parks in different states, but me skating? Nah, I'm too gangster; I can't rock with it. But I watch it.
I'm just excited to be in the fashion business. With my son, we did Trukfit, and I think that's been super innovative for the people that bought it and his lifestyle and how he comes across with the skater look. We just excited.
Once you turn pro and you're making the big money and kids are buying your sneakers and your skates and your gloves and so on, you are a member of that role model club.
My parents put skates on me at age 2, the way it should be if you're serious, and I've always liked it.
I love short track. I competed in short track, I was a world champion in 1986 but at that point in time it wasn't in the Olympic Games so I moved into long track. Short track is a blast to skate and it's a blast to watch.
If you take guys who have been off who have had very limited opportunity to work out and train and haven't skated in months, you can't just throw them back into games. Everyone's going to get hurt.
I'm a lot smaller than most guys, so I have to make up with grittiness and show I can work the hardest, show I'm strong on my skates and show I can push some people around.
I get out on my bike almost every day. If I can't walk somewhere, I'll bike or skateboard.
Plus the public's attention span is so short right now, if a skater doesn't strike while the iron is hot... well it's not like people will forget you, but they just won't care anymore.
I live with fellow speed skaters and National Team members Heather Richardson, Sugar Todd and Mitch Whitmore, and Sugar lives up to her name. She spoils our household with baked goods, and not just at Christmastime.
I love going to football matches, the skate park, and music festivals.
I really respect fashion, but I don't follow trends to be honest, I'm much more into skateboarder style clothes, but I really like fashion photography, portraits, and stuff like that.
If a fan comes up and it is a middle-aged lady, it is probably from 'Prime'; if it is a younger girl, it is probably from when I guest-starred on 'One Tree Hill.' And if it is, like, a skateboard kid or a hipster kid, I can tell they are 'How to Make It' fans.
Now that our kids are getting older, they need their space. We dug out the basement so they will have a place to go crazy in the wintertime. My son is already talking about how he's going to make a skateboard ramp. It's just a mosh pit down there, so they can do whatever they want. We're not even going to finish it.
Being surrounded by hockey, I got forced into it as a kid. I started skating when I was 4 and had a rink only 10 minutes from my home. In my town, we had one outdoor rink and one indoor rink, so you could skate all year long. I lived by a lake, too, so we did a lot of skating on the lake.
I know that I am the kind of person that gets a little bit more nervous than other skaters, but that's because I care for my skating very much. I take all my emotions with me. I can't go out and say 'Now, this is just my job.' I really care.
I bicycle 12,000-foot mountain passes, run, cross train, skate-ski, hike and mountain bike.
I consider myself to be a very good skateboarder, but the difficulty when you're being pulled behind any car, when there's only a 20-ft. line, is that you can't see the potholes.
It all started in a local park in El Paso called Madeleine Park. At a ditch, a very small ditch, that everybody used to go skateboarding in. It was me and Jim Ward and an acoustic guitar. He and I constructed the very first phases of At The Drive In.
All our old record reviews were like, 'Oh, these skate punk kids, blah, blah, blah.' And I don't skate, and we're not skate punks.
