Rafael Nadal

You fight, you try your best, but if you lose, you don’t have to break five racquets and smash up the locker room. You can do those things, but when you’ve finished, nothing’s changed. You’ve still lost. If something positive came from that, I probably would do it. But I see only negativity.

We should try to teach the young people values that are useful to them whether they become professional athletes or not.

Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to do sports for a living. In the beginning, I played a lot of soccer, but in the end I chose tennis. I love sports in general … But tennis is my passion.

It’s the same old story, all you think about is money.

I’m really, really emotional.

Don’t think about being the number one in the world, try instead to get through today’s program as well as you can. Then we will see whether one day you’ll end up as number one or number 100.

The first match is never easy. To play three sets with some important moments, that’s important for the confidence.

[on Roman Abramovich] We were never friends – José Mourinho

Even if I have already peaked, I have to believe I can improve. I wake up every morning, and go to practice, with the illusion that I’m going to get better that day.

In your career you have a lot of good moments and bad ones. The important thing is to have enough motivation to keep working all the days with humility and trying to be a better player than before. I am going to try to continue doing this.

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game – and do it by watching some high school or small-town teams.

It’s more a tennis problem than a mental problem. The transition is difficult. It depends how much time you have. Playing on grass can sometimes be a bit of a lottery.

Every year I go to Broadway to see a musical – I like the music. I saw ‘Mamma Mia;’ I saw ‘Les Miserables;’ I saw ‘Phantom of the Opera’ like six, seven times.

I think the tennis is only a game. You can lose. You can win. After that? In life, there are much more important things than tennis.

Tennis has to be very careful.Not everyone is a computer, it is very good we have John McEnroe. I hope we have a couple more.

Every girl has her own character, every boy his own mind.

The only thing I had on my mind was tennis, and sometimes girls,… My life was all about tennis. My office was the whole world. The word home didn’t really exist.

In the second, I told myself just to hold my serve and try and be aggressive on his serve, and hopefully get a break. I also applied more topspin on my forehand. Once I won the second game after being 0-30 down, my confidence also went up.

The boys are so powerful off of the baseline now that they don’t have to come to the net to finish points. That’s the reason we went to the net. To finish the point. Nowadays, even the big guys can hit winners four feet behind the baseline.

I only ever run when there’s some point to it – say, if it’s in a game of tennis.

The fifth set is not about tennis, it’s about nerves.