At times, I feel overwhelmed and my depression leads me into darkness.
— Dorothy Hamill
My legs are ice skaters' legs. No tan in sight.
People think skating would translate very easily to dancing, but it really doesn't. Dancing is a lot of fun and not as dangerous as being on the ice.
My parents believed in exposing each of their children to an abundance of varied activities in the hope they would find something they loved. They each had found a passion - Dad with his music and Mom with her horses - so it was natural for them to encourage experimentation.
Our family life, before figure skating turned it upside down, seemed normal. Our town of Riverside, Connecticut, was part of Greenwich, and we had the advantage of their wonderful community, with great beaches and beautiful parks.
I've made a commitment to concentrate on my career as an entertainer.
Money is evil.
It took me two years to get an appointment with Mr. Suga who cut my hair for the Olympics. Who knew? I had no idea that it would be popular.
I had the most incredible time on 'Dancing With the Stars.' It never occurred to me when I took it on that I would physically not be able to do it because that's not in an Olympic competitor's vocabulary! It was the most wonderful environment, such a nurturing environment.
I always had short hair, and I hated my short hair. I was always mistaken for a boy, but my mom wouldn't let me change my hair because she was always chasing me around with a hairbrush, and it was always tangled, so she just would cut it off, and she's right: short hair did suit me.
I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I'm trying to be what my mother wasn't for me. My mother's battled depression, so I understand it now as a parent, some of the things that she must have been going through.
They're still considered Olympic eligibles, so there's never an issue whether they're going to turn pro or not. When they get to that level, money is never an issue. They make so much money now.
My coach was a great politician, so he did most of the work. He was good.
In group lesson number six I think we learned how to turn backwards and then just kind of wiggle. That wasn't really skating backward, but I guess I was going in the right direction.
I hated to read. My mother could not get me to read. I'm going through the same thing with my daughter now. I love to read now, but I don't remember reading.
I was a bratty little sister. I was the youngest of three, and I often felt as though I didn't fit in.
Every time you go out on the ice, there are slight flaws. You can always think of something you should have done better. These are the things you must work on.
In my teen years leading up to the Olympics, I loved having the excuse to skip out on parties because of skating. Partying wasn't my thing anyway. Mostly I hung out with other skaters. We were all buddies, so it's not like I missed out on socializing. I was really enjoying myself.
The mind is pretty powerful. In skating, you learn to click into that zone and focus not necessarily on what you're doing but if you're doing it well.
If you don't know a lot about figure skating, it's easy to fall in love with ice dancing because it's so romantic and so theatrical.
Luckily, I discovered ice skating when I was eight and a half years old. There were two wonderful ponds within walking distance of my house. After all the physical activity the summer provided, I craved movement in the cold of winter. I had no skates, so Mom stuffed socks into my brother's old ones.
My whole family, my father's side, there was a great deal of depression, and my mother's side as well.
Everybody has to deal with tough times. A gold medal doesn't make you immune to that. A skater is used to falling down and getting up again.
I used to have terrible tantrums. I was temperamental when I was younger. Actually, what I needed was a swift kick in the pants. What a brat!
I think Princess Diana probably had the most famous haircut, or Farrah Fawcett or Jennifer Aniston.
When I was growing up, there were very few women athletes. I remember watching Olga Corbett, but Peggy Fleming and Janet Lynn were my role models. I never dreamt that I could be at that level. I remember thinking they seemed so elegant and regal and powerful and feminine.
I'm really very glad that I had skating to be my love and my escape. I think that it always gave me something that made me feel good, and it was music, and it was peaceful, and not a lot of the other stresses of life.
I always had the sense that nothing was never good enough - striving for perfection. My mother and I had a sort of typical mother-daughter relationship.
It's different today than it was then. In those days we were strictly amateurs. If I had wanted to stay in for the '80 Olympics, my parents couldn't have afforded it.
I was just ice skating. I had no concept of that. In those days you couldn't see the judges. I was this little person on the ice and they were just people that would stand around the boards.
I don't really think they saw anything in me, except the fact that I was interested in it. Some of the kids would miss a week here and miss a week there, I think they could see that I really enjoyed it.
My mother stopped working when she had my brother. She was a full time mom until I started getting heavily into ice skating lessons, and it got to the point where they really needed my mom to earn an income.
It was very much like Norman Rockwell: small town America. We walked to school or rode our bikes, stopped at the penny candy store on the way home from school, skated on the pond.
I didn't know about competition or the Olympics until Peggy Fleming won in 1968. My mother looked after all of the competition stuff. I just skated. I didn't really love competition, but that was the only way to get better. You'd see more talent.
I didn't study dance. I had some ballet lessons because I needed it for posture and for my arms, mostly. My skating coach said I really needed it, from the belly button up, as opposed to the footwork. In skating, the shoes don't move.
I don't think television really captures the speed and the power of skating.
My family had a membership to the Riverside Yacht Club where my brother, Sandy, learned to sail, and I competed in local swim races. My sister, Marcia, became a competitive springboard diver, and my brother excelled in water polo.
I was always falling in and out of love. I was engaged when I was 16 to the first guy I ever dated, but my father told him I was too young.
If I hadn't been born a woman, I would have certainly been gay.
I was really a spoiled brat when I was a kid skating. Meals are cooked for you, you are driven to the rink, they make costumes for you. Your parents sit around and watch admiringly while you skate. You don't have to think about anything but skating. You're just plain spoiled.
A lot of people who have depression understand that the last thing in the world you want to do when you're feeling that way is get up and exercise. It's virtually impossible to do that. It's like somebody beating you.
I never really liked my short hair; it never occurred to me that people would want it.
One naively thinks that by winning the Olympics, it's going to be this switch, and then your life is going to be perfect, and that's not reality.
You see the fairy tale - four minutes of glory at the Olympics. I thought my life would be cake after that.
I wouldn't say that there's ever been an Olympic champion that didn't deserve to win an Olympic Gold Medal.
There were no competitions on television. The first skating competition I ever remember seeing on television was the 1968 Olympics when Peggy Fleming won.
I was passionate. I found something that I loved. I could be all alone in a big old skating rink and nobody could get near me and I didn't have to talk to anybody because of my shyness. It was great. I was in my fantasy world.
My parents didn't have a lot of money, but we never knew that. They really did the best they could.
I wanted to learn how to skate backwards and they wouldn't help me and they went off and left me on my own.
