Quotes By Shawn Johnson

I still can't believe I'm an Olympic athlete.

I have a healthy lifestyle, but there's nothing you can really do to prevent from rolling an ankle or something like that.

I don't know where I'm really going to cha cha, but hopefully I can find a place.

With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.

My parents- they've been my biggest influences and supporters since day one. They teach me every day that happiness comes from within and not from something outside of your heart.

I told myself after 2008 that I was done for good. But they say you can't keep a gymnast away from her sport.

The body is an amazing machine... If you eat the right things your body will perform incredibly well!

In 2008 I didn't take it all in enough. I was so wrapped up in just the competition that I missed what was going on around me. If I am given that opportunity again to go to the Olympics and be an athlete I want to take it all in because I feel like this is my last shot and I want to feel the team spirit. I want to really live and breathe the USA.

I have a lot of expectations and a lot of goals I want to fulfill, but the biggest dream is still to make the Olympic team for London.

I had a constant fear, a constant little doubt in my mind: 'OK, I'm getting ready to do my standing back full on beam and I might re-tear my ACL.'

To finish off this whole Olympics by finally getting the gold medal, it's the best feeling in the world.

When I was 3 my parents put me in gymnastics because I was a bundle of energy and they just didn't know what to do with me! They put me in a Tots class and I just fell in love with it.

It's been strange and weird watching the other girls at the U.S. Olympic trials just because I was training to be out there myself.

I don't want to be all power and muscle.

I pay attention to my diet to be a healthier gymnast, but I'm not obsessive over it.

My approach to gymnastics in Beijing was heavily based on the amount of difficulty I could do.

My knee is almost back to normal. I am back in training.

After 13 years of hard landings in gymnastics, one ski run had delivered the biggest injury of my career.

People only see gymnastics on TV and in the Olympics at such an extreme. So it can be intimidating.

I fell in love with running, and I finally have time to do it now.

My coach, Liang Chow, had one rule while I was training for the 2008 Olympics: no skiing. I could do anything I wanted outside the gym, he said, except ski.

A comeback in gymnastics is almost impossible in itself.

Stay strong. Stand up. Have a voice.

When I was younger, my coach, Liang Chow, made all the decisions. I would go to the gym for practice, do exactly what Chow told me to do, go home, come back and start all over again. If Chow told me to do 50 squat jumps, I did 50 squat jumps.

I had surgery to repair the ACL in February 2010 and was back in the gym by June, but rushed things too quickly and ended up re-tearing my MCL in September.

To have any doubt in your body is the biggest weakness an athlete can have. There are times when I physically can't get myself to go for a skill because I'm thinking, 'My knee hurts really bad.'

Every year I just kept going back to gymnastics, but I didn't start out training 10 hours a day. When I turned 10 or 11, I got more serious and I focused a lot on making it to the elite level, and from there I just kept going.

I get less and less sleep these days, so when I have any down time all I want to do is sleep!

Staying healthy and consistent is paramount.

I was at the Olympic Games winning medals and I still doubted my image. I doubted what I looked like. That's sad.