Quotes from Dorothy Hamill

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.

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.

Each evening, after my parents' self-medication, their behavior would change. Some of the time they would be happier and we could get through the evening unscathed. But sometimes it would get ugly.

I wanted to learn how to skate backwards and they wouldn't help me and they went off and left me on my own.

If I'm on skates, I feel at home no matter what I'm doing. If they wanted me to sing and dance I think I could do it just becauseI was on skates. When I'm not on skates, though, I feel very strange.

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.

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.

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've made a commitment to concentrate on my career as an entertainer.

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.

My legs are ice skaters' legs. No tan in sight.

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 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.

I think Princess Diana probably had the most famous haircut, or Farrah Fawcett or Jennifer Aniston.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.