Ian Thorpe

For myself, losing is not coming second. It's getting out of the water knowing you could have done better. For myself, I have won every race I've been in.

I thought I could, and thought I would, swim a lot quicker - much quicker.

Compared to how I have raced before and how I have competed, the success that I have had, this does look like doom compared to it.

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.

A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.

In the final analysis, it is your decision to make, but it doesn't move as fast as I'd like it to move.