The only disability in life is a bad attitude.
Scott Hamilton
The high road is always respected. Honesty and integrity are always rewarded.
Adversity, and perseverance and all these things can shape you. They can give you a value and a self-esteem that is priceless.
When you turn professional, you become an entertainer, and like every other entertainer, you don't want to get a bad review.
Most other competitions are individual achievements, but the Olympic Games is something that belongs to everybody.
Always try to maintain complete tolerance and always make an effort to give people more than they expect.
And the fact that I liked to show off and be the center of attention really lends itself to figure skating very well.
Everything that I've ever been able to accomplish in skating and in life has come out of adversity and perseverance.
When you're expected to win and you have the press saying that you are going to win the Olympic gold medal, and you're the only sure thing in the Olympics, it can undermine your confidence.
Fame is a very confusing thing, because you are recognized by a lot of people that you've never seen before, and they're at a great advantage.
I don't think most teachers realize how much impact they have.
I had a ninth grade teacher who told me I was much smarter and much better than I was allowing myself to be.
Male figure skating is different than female figure skating; we're not America's sweetheart.
I started skating and I kind of liked it because I could run circles around the guys that wouldn't pick me to play baseball.
I was more interested in skating and the girls and traveling than I was in calculus.
So as an amateur Olympic competitor I loved criticism, because it made me better. But now as a professional I don't really know how to channel it or where to take it, so I don't take it quite as well.
I didn't want to be the sissy figure skater, you know.
I just try to touch people's hearts in a way through skating, so they're not just witnessing a performance, they're feeling a performance and they're a part of it.
From the fall of October, 1980 to March, 1984 I never lost a competition.
I was nine-years-old when I first put on skates.
That's what makes the Ryder Cup in golf so much better than the Masters or the U.S. Open. To be a part of something that is not about personal achievement, but about representing everyone and sharing it with the whole country, it's wonderful.
I'm very accessible. I don't get into this ego thing.
I graduated a the top of my class in the '84 Olympic Games; I won a gold medal.
What was really funny is that as I got older all those guys who called me a sissy in junior high school wanted me to be their best friend because they wanted to meet all the girls that I knew in figure skating.
But I never really thought that I would be extraordinarily successful at skating, it's just something that happened, you know.
Half of figure skating is opinion, convincing judges.
And so figure skating was a great vehicle for me to kind of be competitive at something, without having to be big.
Rationality is not one of this industry's attributes.
Without strength and courage it's really hard to perform at the highest levels of international figure skating, because you're alone on the ice and you only have seven minutes over two nights to prove yourself.
