Martina Navratilova

“Gender is irrelevant. Certainly the tennis ball doesn't know what the gender was of the tennis coach.”

“Variety is what I would recommend: As variety is the spice of life in food, so it is in exercise. Change it up. But most of all, don't overdo it.”

“I just wanted to play tennis. It wasn't a job. It was an ambition. I knew I could make money at it. I was 18 - old enough to think I could do it, young enough not to consider the consequences.”

“I am healthy. I have been blessed with a very good body, and I have worked hard at it. I had surgery on my toe, and I'm still recovering from that. That's the only joint that was hurting. Earlier, I had a knee replacement, hip replacement, shoulder surgeries, but I have been lucky. I don't feel any pain when I play.”

“I've been active in animal rights and all kinds of environmental stuff and children's charities over the years.”

“When I reached America, there was so much space and colour. The possibilities seemed endless. At least that's how I felt at 18. But of course, I didn't have to take the usual immigrant route of battling to find a job and a home in a strange country. I could play tennis. I spoke the language, and I was making money. It was easy, really.”

“After I retired, I was in Aspen, and after two months of being at home, I started to go nuts. I needed to go somewhere because that was the longest I never travelled.”

“Goodbye 2010. If you were a fish, I'd throw you back.”

“I know propaganda when I see it, and I can speak with authority on it.”

“I tell you, if I was in the same position I was in 1975, trying to leave a communist country and trying to live a free life, America is not the country that I would think about going to considering how many rights the GOP is trying to take away.”

“For six years, I was really on my own and did not have a coach.”

“I've been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”

“That's the media now. They get lazy. Rumors become fact. Some blogger says something, next thing you know, it's in 'USA Today.'”

“I've always been a rebel, always curious about the world around me.”

“Sport doesn't know barriers, really. You are judged on your performance... how far you can jump, how fast you can run, how well you can hit a tennis ball.”

“I really couldn't come out until after I got my citizenship, because it was a disclaim - back then, it could have been a disqualifier. I could have been denied my U.S. citizenship because I was gay. So I didn't - I stayed quiet.”

“You can have a coach for five or six years, and eventually, that coach has so little new to say. So get somebody else to give a different point of view. Somebody will see something I don't see and vice versa. You evolve with your game and your coaches.”

“Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.”

“So many athletes are afraid to use their platform to do the right thing and speak what they feel, and that's very depressing. Sure, they are afraid of insulting people and losing money because of it, and everyone wants to make the maximum amount of money in their lifetime. But at the expense of who you are? I don't know. That just wasn't in my DNA.”

“I think the key is for women not to set any limits.”