Unstoppable

They were poor but did not know it.

I want to beat everyone. It’s not just the winning. It’s the not being beaten

I think Serena hated me for being the skinny kid who beat her, against all odds, at Wimbledon. I think she hated me for taking something that she believed belonged to her. I think she hated me for seeing her at her lowest moment. But mostly I think she hated me for hearing her cry. She’s never forgiven me for it. Not long after the tournament, I heard that Serena told a friend—who then told me—“I will never lose to that little bitch again.”

She taught me that every time they knock you down, you should jump up smiling, as if to say, “That? Oh, that was nothing.”

Instead of it being 4–1 Sugiyama in the third, it was 4–1 Sharapova.

I got to play Monica Seles

Borg and McEnroe

Lindsay Davenport and Tracy Austin

I had been watching his match that day only because I’d lost early at those championships. So his good memory was my bad memory. What meant everything to him happened only because I had lost. Like he said, you can have the right thing, but it might come at the wrong time.

was then, at that moment, that the emotional pull I had been fighting came to an end. I knew, and so did he, that I couldn’t be that person at this time of my life