Tennis Player

I do get pissed off when I'm at some gay event, and there's a 25-year-old, and he has no idea who I am. And I say, 'You need to know more about your gay history, boy.' I think the younger generation takes it a little bit for granted.

I've always been a rebel, always curious about the world around me.

I tell you, if I was in the same position I was in 1975, trying to leave a communist country and trying to live a free life, America is not the country that I would think about going to considering how many rights the GOP is trying to take away.

It takes a lot of guts to come out to your friends and family. For most gay people, coming out is the most traumatic experience in their life because of the worry about the backlash: 'What's going to happen? Are my parents going to accept me? Are my friends going to accept me? Are my sisters and brothers going to accept me?'

Russia is now very far from being a communist country, but when I walked around Moscow, I kept glimpsing these haunting images. There were statues of Lenin and some neon signs of the hammer and sickle. I remembered myself then as a little girl, living under that oppression.

It takes a lot of guts to come out to your friends and family. For most gay people, coming out is the most traumatic experience in their life because of the worry about the backlash: 'What's going to happen? Are my parents going to accept me? Are my friends going to accept me? Are my sisters and brothers going to accept me?'

Sure I know where the press room is - I just look for where they throw the dog meat.

The mark of great sportsmen is not how good they are at their best, but how good they are their worst.

I've been active in animal rights and all kinds of environmental stuff and children's charities over the years.

After I retired, I was in Aspen, and after two months of being at home, I started to go nuts. I needed to go somewhere because that was the longest I never travelled.

So many athletes are afraid to use their platform to do the right thing and speak what they feel, and that's very depressing. Sure, they are afraid of insulting people and losing money because of it, and everyone wants to make the maximum amount of money in their lifetime. But at the expense of who you are? I don't know. That just wasn't in my DNA.

I just try to concentrate on concentrating.

I hope, when I stop, people will think that somehow I mattered.

Tennis is the purest form of democracy. There was a symbiotic, chicken-and-egg relationship for me between democracy and tennis.

After I retired, I was in Aspen, and after two months of being at home, I started to go nuts. I needed to go somewhere because that was the longest I never travelled.

You can't live in the past, there's nothing you can do about it.

I am healthy. I have been blessed with a very good body, and I have worked hard at it. I had surgery on my toe, and I'm still recovering from that. That's the only joint that was hurting. Earlier, I had a knee replacement, hip replacement, shoulder surgeries, but I have been lucky. I don't feel any pain when I play.

Ted Cruz, if he's elected president, the first thing he will do is return Don't Ask Don't Tell and roll back same-sex marriage laws. Which is law - hello - you can't really take it away. It's really terrifying the direction we're going in now.

I shouldn't say I'm looking forward to leading a normal life, because I don't know what normal is.

I didn't realize until I was doing commentary what a gladiator-like competition tennis is - other than no one dies. The crowd is waiting for the players to come, and they walk through the tunnel, and they get on the court, and they get out their rackets, their weapons, and now they start.