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

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?'

We developed a system in Romania that was very successfully continued for a number of years, but I don't know if it was because of some conflict in the organisation or whether there was government interference... but somehow, they have forgotten the importance of raising gymnasts to be ready for every Olympics.

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

I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Capt. Peter Townsend. Mindful of the church's teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others.

I think the institution of marriage is a great idea, but for me it's just an idea.

We buy a copy of 'Gravity's Rainbow,' say, and we carry our copy home. We open it; we fall into it. And it is here that the word 'copy' fails. Because what I experience when I read 'Gravity's Rainbow,' or 'Beloved,' or 'The Moviegoer,' is not at all a 'copy' of what you experience when you read the same novel.

In my 20s, I was leaving university, getting married, or having a baby. And then, in my 30s, I was just keeping my head above water. When I hit 40, I thought, 'I have got to get a grip of my life and really point it in the direction I want it to go rather than just swim hard against the current.'