It was simple reality - most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock - great big hair and white teeth and long legs. Then there were the rest of us.

If you're working with someone who you get on with and you're supposed to hate them on the screen, then you get this playful challenge thing where you're trying to one-up each other and that's really interesting. Sometimes it can become like tennis. The harder you hit the ball back, then the harder the hit it back to you.

When you are very little tennis should be fun, it should be a game.

After being on the court for six hours, being on TV is very glamorous and fun for me. But tennis is always going to be my priority. It's not going to be this thing when all of a sudden TV will get in the way of that.

Is only a tennis match. At the end, that's life. There is much more important things.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life, and there's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life.

If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that's concentration.

My tennis is aggressive, though I wouldn't say that it's more physical than technical. I rely more on technique than physique, but being physical is always a help to me.

Tennis just a game, family is forever.

When you do something best in life, you don't really want to give that up - and for me it's tennis.

I play golf, but sometimes it's so un-relaxing, I have to play tennis to wind down. Now that I think about it, this process is sort of like when I go out for sushi and have to get a slice of pizza afterward.

Game shows are like golf and tennis are for some men. It's not like going to work.

In elementary school, I didn't even play sports, I was just straight up on the juggling team. I started out with the floating scarves. Then I went to tennis balls and all that. Then by like the fourth grade I was doing the Chinese yo-yo. And I was good, man. I was like a master Chinese yo-yo person. I was top five Dead or Alive in South Carolina.

The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, 'A civilization is judged only in its decline.' That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.

You always want to win. That is why you play tennis, because you love the sport and try to be the best you can at it.

I enjoy tennis, Pilates. I read magazines and love fashion.

I do everything right-handed - football, tennis, darts and golf - except for snooker.

Why don't they go back to wood racquets? Then we would see the best tennis to be played.

I was very, very shy as a younger girl, just petrified of people. Tennis helped give me an identity and made me feel like somebody.

Whoever has played tennis knows the court is pretty big and you always have space to put the ball in.