70 Quotes by Dorothy Hamill

The mind is pretty powerful. In skating, you learn to click into that zone and focus not necessarily on what you're doing but if you're doing it well.

It was very much like Norman Rockwell: small town America. We walked to school or rode our bikes, stopped at the penny candy store on the way home from school, skated on the pond.

At times, I feel overwhelmed and my depression leads me into darkness.

I was passionate. I found something that I loved. I could be all alone in a big old skating rink and nobody could get near me and I didn't have to talk to anybody because of my shyness. It was great. I was in my fantasy world.

Everybody has to deal with tough times. A gold medal doesn't make you immune to that. A skater is used to falling down and getting up again.

I always had the sense that nothing was never good enough - striving for perfection. My mother and I had a sort of typical mother-daughter relationship.

I always had short hair, and I hated my short hair. I was always mistaken for a boy, but my mom wouldn't let me change my hair because she was always chasing me around with a hairbrush, and it was always tangled, so she just would cut it off, and she's right: short hair did suit me.

My family had a membership to the Riverside Yacht Club where my brother, Sandy, learned to sail, and I competed in local swim races. My sister, Marcia, became a competitive springboard diver, and my brother excelled in water polo.

You see the fairy tale - four minutes of glory at the Olympics. I thought my life would be cake after that.