When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God, why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.

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Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life.

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The potential for greatness lives within us all.

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But when you come from a large, wonderful family, there's always a way to achieve your goals.

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My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.

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I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.

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When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.

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What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.

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I don't know why I run so fast. I just run.

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Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.

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