Quotes from Amy Purdy

My spleen burst. I remember feeling my heart beating really fast. Beating right out of my chest.

I've always been driven, and I like the creative aspect of figuring things out.

I'm not trying to be an inspiration, but I'm flattered to be considered one.

I want to live a fulfilling life.

That's really what the Paralympics is about: these amazing athletes and this technology that's allowing them to reach their full potential.

I've always made the choice to do everything to my fullest potential.

Every day that I am healthy, I want to use that day to its fullest now.

Road trips to me are just such an escape. You listen to your music, and you roll the windows down. You're usually going to somewhere fun.

Dancers know how to move their arms and their hands. But I don't know the first thing about how to move my arms and hands gracefully.

Just the thought of being on Oprah's radar at all is humbling, but to actually have her take time get on the phone with me kind of blows my mind.

At the age of 19, the day after I graduated high school, I moved to a place where it snowed, and I became a massage therapist. With this job, all I needed were my hands and my massage table by my side and I could go anywhere. For the first time in my life, I felt free, independent, and completely in control of my life.

That's the problem with bacterial meningitis: it progresses really fast. You think you have the flu, and they say within 15 hours it's severely deadly - for sure within the first 24 hours - but even the first 15 hours.

If you want something bad enough and you work hard enough, anything's possible.

In snowboarding, I've always looked at really strong competitors through a lens of gratitude rather than envy in the sense that the better my competition is, the more it forces me to work hard, focus, and be better myself if I want to succeed, which I do.

I got this second chance at life, and I live it.

I've never wanted sympathy votes in anything I do in my life.

If somebody would've told me that I was going to lose my legs at the age of 19, I would've thought there's absolutely no way I'd be able to handle that. But then it happened, and I realized that there's so much more to live for, that my life isn't about my legs.

When disease took my legs, I eventually realized I didn't need them to lead a full, empowering life.

I was on my death bed, and I remember hanging on to these words, 'Don't be scared. You are going to live an amazing life,' and I have.

In my dreams, whatever I am doing, I look down to see if I have prosthetics. It sets my time frame in my dream, I think. I'd have these dreams that I am running and launching myself, and I look down and see that I have prosthetics. I have a lot of those, where I do great, amazing things with my prosthetics.

I can't really say I miss my toes.

I have a very good sense of my body and where it's at. Although I don't feel the ground in the same way that somebody else would, I'm very aware... I can feel pressure, and I know exactly where my toes are and exactly where my heel is.

I was 19 years old, and I felt like I had the flu one day. Within 24 hours, I was in the hospital on life support, and I was given less than a 2 percent chance of living. It took five days for the doctors to find out that I had contracted bacterial meningitis.

As humans, we need to reach out for support.