Quotes by Romanian authors

"I like to tell young people to work hard for your goals and live in the moment"

"Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win"

"As an Olympic champion gymnast, I have always stayed involved in my sport"

"I worked hard in gymnastics since the time I was six years old until I retired at 23 years of age"

"My marriage to my husband, Bart Conner in 1996 is my proudest personal moment"

"I don't run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet"

"I believe that you should gravitate to people who are doing productive and positive things with their lives"

"You should also appreciate the goodness around you, and surround yourself with positive people"

"Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave"

"When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water... If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit"

"To see far is one thing, going there is another"

"We die in proportion to the words we fling around us"

"Of course, I grew up in Communist Romania, but I am happy to say that now our country is democratic, and prospering, since the revolution in 1989"

"We are not coaching on a daily basis because we often travel with our charity and commercial interests"

"One of the most difficult times in my life was when I escaped from Romania in November of 1989"

"My parents were very loving, but disciplinarians"

"Of course, most people remember that I received the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics competition"

"I have had a few turning points, the first day I entered a gymnastics school at age 6"

"I ended up in the US for a month or so, before moving to Montreal with some Romanian friends"

"Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them"

"Architecture is inhabited sculpture"

"They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things"

"Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you. Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them"

"There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning"

"Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things"

"What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface"

"Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action"

"You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life"

"Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone"

"Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in"