My father showed me so much love. He showed my brother so much love. He just, he had a rough life. You know, he grew up in a boys home in the Bronx. He didn't really know his own family. So I couldn't hold it against him that he didn't know how to parent. He didn't know how to be the perfect husband. But he loved as much as he could.

I don't just want to focus on soccer, soccer, soccer. You're going to look back 20 years from now and of course you're going to remember the games. But I'm going to remember seeing my family in the stands.

London 2012 is all about winning a medal. Not just any medal, the gold medal.

My father was never around. But I glorified my father, and I was always daddy's little girl. He was my first soccer coach.

In front of the world, all of a sudden I'm a great athlete and I'm put into an environment with 25 other women and I'm expected to go to team meals, team functions.

Every athlete acquires routines as a way to help control nerves.

When I did 'Dancing With the Stars,' everyone in Hollywood was saying I had too much muscle.

You're always going to survive the pain of loss. I can live with that confidence inside of me.

I never felt the same passion for the game in the States and there were a lot of headaches, a lot of obstacles to overcome - it didn't just run itself for the love of the game because soccer is not the No. 1 sport as it is in Europe.

When the Olympics and World Cups come around, that's when you see the real outpouring of support that there really is for female football.

I just want to stay in my hotel room, read my book. I enjoy that private time.

I'm just going to embrace every experience.

I usually tell people I watch like '24' and 'Prison Break.'

I think every athlete has their window of opportunity, and you just have to jump on it. You never know when it can end. So I'm just trying to live large while I have the opportunity.

I think at an early age I learned not to judge people.

I hate the cliche of 'just have fun,' but what I've seen in today's sports, especially with parents, is they put so much pressure on the kids.

I've always been a fan of Justin Timberlake.

I like to read books and be alone; I'm not social butterfly person. I'm sorry.

You know journalists. You know the media. They are going to hang on to anything negative they possibly can.

I never wanted to go to college in the state of Washington because I was so embarrassed and ashamed of my family life. I wanted to run. That's what always what I do, I run. I run as far away as I can.

Everybody should be affected by their own realities in their own lives, their own struggles in their own lives. It makes us who we are, and we all know that.

I live for competition. It makes my life complete.

My life goes in four-year cycles. The World Cup is every four years and the Olympics are every four years.

L.A. is a bit strange. It doesn't seem like the real world.

All my life, since the time I was little, has been a long distraction. At least that is the way some people want to perceive it, but for me, it's given me a lot of strength.

I have a lot of critics; we all know that.

I have no personal beef with Brandi Chastain. There's nothing personal.

On a global stage, I have respect in the goalkeeping world.

Growing up, I felt insecure about my build. I didn't feel very feminine. But as time went on, I learned to completely embrace my body.

I couldn't have been a great goalkeeper without power, agility and quickness.

When I was younger, I was a complete tomboy. Then in college I started emerging out of the tomboy stage and dressing differently.

Female athletes are supposed to be toned down. You're always supposed to talk about the team and never stand out.

You can predict all you want, but everybody knows what predictions get you.

I don't just want to focus on soccer, soccer, soccer.

I think people who don't have conflict in their lives are just trying to please people and not really living life to the fullest.

You're not going to be liked by everybody when you speak the truth. I don't speak the truth to put people down; I don't speak the truth to show disrespect.

I travel a lot and rarely make it home to Seattle.

I carry my iPod everywhere. My favorite group is the John Butler Trio, an Australian jam band. The lead singer and guitarist writes amazing lyrics.

It's clear that women athletics are pretty far behind in every way. In terms of facilities, how much we make, everything.

It's a complicated thing, knowing how much pain my father caused in my life and the lives of others whom I love, yet still holding love for him in my heart. No matter what he did, he was my father. He helped create the person I am.

I love pedicures. And, yes, I have a ton of shoes.

My No. 1 goal, and what I've spent my entire life striving to achieve is to win a World Cup. I want to retire so badly with that World Cup, but if I don't, then I'll retire knowing that I've done everything I could to get it.

Alarm bells ring when a politician stands haughty upon his honour.

Nothing is definite, nothing is finished, nothing is determined.

I have never met an intelligent optimist. That is not to say I think pessimism makes you intelligent, but I have always felt like an Old Testament Jeremiah or Cassandra from ancient Greece. I want to run down the streets warning people.

Rejection is the one constant of human experience.

You cannot exercise and be amused about it. You cannot integrate the dying bug into your core workout and hold to the position that you are a spiritual being. In this way, the body and the mind are each other's opposite unto death, which is why you have to choose which of them you are going to follow.

Leaned on by Turkey and understandably wary of false equivalences - for not every death is a massacre, and not every war is genocidal - Israel connives in Armenian genocide denial.

I am happiest now. There's nothing like running out of time to make you realise you're in the right skin, with the right person, and that the Apocalypse will happen with or without you.

To any young person starting out on life and looking to make a quick fortune, I have this advice: forget banking, but go instead into security, scaffolding, or urban trench digging. Not in a hands-on way. I mean start a company.