I think aerobatic pilots make the best pilots because you know, you're just so confident in an aeroplane. If you're gonna get into trouble, I'd rather be with someone that's a skilled aerobatic pilot.

We can think so much about life and take ourselves so seriously; I mean, I like to tell people, 'Don't take life too seriously' because you'll cloud the experience. That's what the meaning of life is to me - being able to enjoy the moment.

Life is about opportunities, creating them and embracing them, and for me, that was the Olympic dream. That's what defined me. That was my bliss.

When I got home from hospital, and I was in a wheelchair in a plaster body cast, an aeroplane flew over. And I thought to myself, 'Well, if I can't walk, then I might as well fly.' And I was lifted into the aeroplane for the first time. And when I took the controls of the aeroplane, I knew this was something I could do. I thought, 'I can fly.'

I suppose for a very long time I've been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

Baseball cannot be learned as a trade. It begins with the sport of the schoolboy, and though it may end in the professional, I am sure there is not a single one of these who learned the game with the expectation of making it a business. There have been years in the life of each during which he must have ate and drank and dreamed baseball.

Everybody complains about getting older, but I find it such a rich time of life. There are negative things about it, I suppose, but more than that, I'm finding it to be a very positive experience in which growth suggests itself in a much more alluring way than it did when I was young - isn't that funny?

I certainly firsthand know and love people who didn't fall in love with a woman or didn't even realize they were attracted to women until much later in life, and I'm sure that's true for many men who find themselves attracted to men as well. It doesn't always happen in adolescence. And that experience is completely valid and OK.