Top 126 Quotes & Sayings by Nadia Comaneci - Page 2

It feels good when you come to a place like Oklahoma to charge up the batteries. I need that.

We used to exchange leotards with gymnasts from other countries. I don't remember who I got my most prized leotard from, but it was one with a lot of stars on it.

I like Oklahoma. It's a quiet place. You can work, and nobody disturbs you.

The fans had become used to looking toward the scoreboard whenever a gymnast stuck a landing. You could tell they were thinking, 'Was that good enough? Would the numbers read 10.00?' The athlete was looking, too.

I did not even look at the scoreboard when my routine was done in 1976.

Gymnastics is so huge in the Olympics. There are a lot of fans who want to see more.

I think gymnastics was associated with the 10. I thought that belonged to the sport, and somehow we gave it way.

I work out every day, but my idea is to make something short. I work out a maximum half hour. I only do like 20 minutes of cardio, and I do some stretching and some light weights, and I'm out of there.

I'm the kind of person, I leave a little space for better.

People assume a lot of things about gymnasts - that the girls work too hard, it's way too much for them, they are too young to work so hard.

Yes, gymnasts aim for perfection, but I never thought about the score. If that's what's in your mind, it will probably mess you up.

Once you become an Olympic champion, you are expected to win all the time.

I'm not a dreamer for, you know, 'I want to go to the moon someday.' I accomplished something when I was young, which was much more than I expected to. My results were much bigger than I ever dreamed about it.

I didn't realize that winning the Olympics at age 14 automatically put me in the category of being a celebrity.

I thought celebrity meant Hollywood, that's it. I began to see that does include Olympians. People have so much respect for Olympians.

When I got married in Bucharest, there were 10,000 people on the street. People didn't go to work that day. It was emotional to see how people care about you. I didn't expect that.

If I was a boy, nobody would care that I worked out six, seven hours a day when I was 9 years old, no? Why were people always saying 'poor little girl?' I liked to work out and always did more than I was asked to.

To me, family is what is important. If you don't have it, nothing is going to matter.

My mother never watched me train in Romania. She wasn't allowed, it just wasn't done back then. My training was paid for by the government. My parents were not at the Olympics with me, either. I never expected them to be.

Gymnastics should be popular everywhere; you just need the right person to start the right programme.

The - I don't want to say older, but the more experienced I get, I treasure and I honor what I've done much more.

Romania doesn't have a big tradition of gymnastics as a fun activity. We were a little behind in this aspect.

People think you have pressure when you are young. It's the other way round, actually.

When you're growing up, you realize you've got a lot of heavy things on your shoulders.

In Montreal, I kept thinking, 'Pay attention: this is the Olympics! It only happens once every four years!'

I like America. I don't want to hurt America.

After retiring from competition in 1981, I did exhibitions and coached.

Two gold medals and two silver, I don't think is that bad... I think I still did a pretty good job.

I never thought I would be standing here, married to an All-American guy, living in Oklahoma. What a country.

I am not a perfect 10 anymore. I can only try my best.

I basically have my life today as a result of what I did as a child. What did I miss out on? Yeah, I missed not hanging out at shopping malls, I guess, but that is not a big deal because you don't get a medal for that.

Near the end of my career, I saw things that didn't make too much sense to me when I was a kid.

Scoring the first 10 in history was a big deal, but the fact that even an electronic scoreboard could not figure out how to put out a score, it made the story more historic.

When I went into the Montreal Games, nobody expected much out of me.

I think a lot of people don't actually know me. They think, 'She's like this,' or, 'She's like that.' They say I have no emotions - I do, but you couldn't see them then. I had to keep them inside.

If I have a feeling of not trusting, I don't get too close.

Ceausescu thought I had only a few medals, but I have a room full of them in Bucharest, between 150-200 in all. They needed suitcases to haul them out.

I come from a communist country. We learned nothing of lawyers, nothing about rights.

I wasn't allowed to leave Romania. That made me mad. You just want your freedom. You want your space. You want opportunity.

I had more pressure when I competed in Moscow. I had no pressure in Montreal because I only went to do my routines and hoping I didn't mess it up when I was on the bar. When I came back, 10,000 people were at the airport and I thought, 'Why?' because, in my mind, I hadn't done anything different from what I used to do in my gym.

I couldn't do everything in the first or second day; it took me years to be able to get to the achievement that I've had. I wasn't perfect from the beginning.

In the '80 Olympics... people expected me to win. I was good enough to win, and I made a mistake and ended up second, which is pretty good, too.

Two days after returning from Montreal, I was training again, and I went on to win two more golds at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

I was turning actually 15 at the Olympics in '76... I don't think that one year makes a huge difference.

Now, I have a kid, I have businesses to take care of, I have to travel. I have to sit down... and find a little time for me.

Gymnastics was my way to travelling the world.

I tell people, 'Have you ever been to Oklahoma? There are a lot of nice people there that do wonderful things.'

I am a relaxed person. I am very happy.

When I was 14, I had no pressure. I was a kid, and I didn't understand all the attention.

I had a lot of energy, and my mom decided to look for a place where I can spend the energy, because I was jumping on the couch and furniture, and I was jumping on the top of the things in the house.

When you go out of your country and meet people, you get a wider perspective.

I come from a wonderful country with wonderful people.

See, when I went to the Olympics in '76, the gymnastics people knew that I was good, but everybody else, after I won, everybody was like, 'Where's she coming from? Who is she? What is Romania?'

I like seeing advanced acrobatics, but I also like to see more than tumbling. It's important to combine the artistry of gymnastics with the tough skills. It's called artistic gymnastics. We should stand by the name.

I used to tell people if they looked at a map, it was right in the middle of the United States. But now everybody knows Oklahoma because of the Thunder and their success. I don't know if I'll get 'Why?' anymore.

It was my mother who got me involved in gymnastics, sending me to classes when I was six just to stop me doing back flips on the couch and destroying the furniture.

What makes me happy is the appreciation of people around me.

What can you know about life at 14? I have learned a lot since, but you learn slowly. You get hit by many things and try to make sense of it.

Work hard for your goals and live in the moment.

Jump off the beam, flip off the bars follows your dreams, and reach for the stars