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" When I was eight and a half, my parents moved to a part of Queens where there was a club nearby. We joined, and if you believe in someone up above, I think I was meant to play tennis. "

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" If you look at the top 100 players, you would see that the great majority of them have had at least a couple of surgeries. That tells me that we have to protect the players. "

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" What I think is frustrating for Americans is that it feels like more was going to change with Obama. "

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" When I walk out there on court, I become a maniac... Something comes over me, man. "

" I remember when I was younger taking more pride in Wimbledon than the French. That and the U.S. Open - they were the ones I wanted to win. "

" It's one thing if you live in London and you're rooting for Chelsea or you're in New York and you love the Giants or Jets and no matter who's on the team you're into it. It's different in tennis; you're sort of your own guy, so you have to reach out and grab a person in a different way. "

" The sting of losing is bad. "

" Of course for your main rivals, you're going to get extra motivated for it, particularly if you haven't played him for a long time. "

" My best tennis at my peak was when I played a lot of matches. "

" I don't think enough players channel the energy of the crowd. If it's done properly, and you don't let anger overwhelm and distract you, it's like a shot of adrenaline in the arm, and it gets the crowd pumped up. "

" I am finicky about making sure my sneakers are pretty tight. It is almost like a superstition for me. "

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" No one cares about the Davis Cup. How many people know I won five Davis Cups and seven majors, but that I rarely played the Australian Open? "

" You're asking too much of the women. They shouldn't be playing as many events as men. If tennis is best served by women playing events with men, so be it. "

" Women have it better in tennis than any other sport, but you shouldn't push them to play more than they're capable of playing. "

" You look at a guy like Michael Jordan: I can't believe there will be other basketball players like him. "

" The greatest compliment I ever got was when people called me an artist, and I understand that solo aspect of being an artist, when you're in there by yourself, trying to do something great, and people who don't even know you can come up and just dump on you. "

" What made my matches against Borg and Connors interesting was, comparing it to boxing, it was like a puncher and a counter-puncher. "

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" I'll let the racket do the talking. "

" I can't advocate people not liking each other. But... I'd prefer it. "

" If you're out there and things are going badly, are you going to cry or break down? "

" The older I get, the better I used to be. "

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

" We should reach out to people to try to go after the fans the way other sports do. Because we can't just depend on the fact that it is a great game. "

" Roland Garros is the only one of the four majors that is 15 days, and that is too long. "

" I didn't get along with most of the players I played against, but the one guy I did get along with was my greatest rival, so it can be done. "

" I used to get two racquets a year. As you can imagine, they didn't last me too long. "

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" I would not have an event before the majors. I would build them up. It very rarely happens that a player plays the week before, wins the event, and then goes on to win the slam. "

" It's ironic - people used to want to suspend me and talk about how bad my behaviour was, but now they like it when I shout and scream. "

" I like John McCain, or he seems like a cool guy in a lot of ways. I don't agree with a lot of his policies, but he still seems like a cool guy. "

" I had a harsh lesson in 1996, when I lost four times to Andres Gomez on clay. "

" Well I think that's probably one of a few, where I grew up in the City of New York, it's got a lot of energy, my parents are Irish-American so there was a bit of yelling going on in my house but it seemed normal. "