When you have an audience standing and screaming the entire way through the short program and cheering every element you do, whether it's footwork, or spin, or a jump, to have that kind of emotion coming at you from every direction in the building, it's the most amazing sensation you can get as a sportsman.

Creating emotion was what my career was all about. I wanted people to laugh at me; I wanted people to cry with me. I wanted people to feel good or to think about something when they watched me. I think that's why, even not being an Olympic champion, I have such a huge following around the world.

Michael Phelps is a sporting god among men. It is hard to say if anyone will ever match his accomplishments, but it has been an honor to see him become a legend. He makes me proud of the American sports institution and proud of the sports that get mass attention only every four years.

I'm going to skate exactly the way I want to, create programs that I like, and everything will fall into place where it is supposed to.

As a father, you immediately become uncool, especially the older they get. The older you get, it's inevitable that, as cool as you think you are, you're probably just as lame in your kids' eyes.

Parents are working more than ever before and unable to monitor what kids are eating at home, and schools are selling astronomical amounts of junk food in order to supplement shrinking budgets. It's a ticking time bomb, and America's children are exploding.

I have no intention of going back to France, except for yearly visits to meet my family.

I was raised by my great-great aunt. I was adopted within our family. My mother had me when she was, I think, 15, 16. They tried to get her to have an abortion and she refused. So, my 'mama' adopted me, which was really her great aunt, which was really my great-great aunt, who was named Viola Dickerson. I was told that my mother was my sister.