Quotes from Aimee Mullins

The power of the human will to compete and the drive to excel beyond the body's normal capabilities is most beautifully demonstrated in the arena of sport.

If we want to discover the full potential in our humanity, we need to celebrate those heartbreaking strengths and those glorious disabilities we all have. It is our humanity and all the potential within it that makes us beautiful.

I'm not running around as a continual ray of sunshine. It's just I don't believe in wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Get over it.

'Triumph over tragedy' - how pathetic! I think people are generally freaked out that I'm multifaceted. You don't hear people saying, 'Gwyneth Paltrow won an Oscar - and she's blonde!'

I have learned not to overlook the advantages of being me. From when I was a softball player, and I held the stolen bases record. I would slide into second with my prostheses, and the girl on the base could either step aside or meet two wooden sticks.

I was once told that I had become too confident and that it made me less likeable. Many successful people will get this at some point, because the people who haven't followed a similar path can be threatened by someone who has and is unabashed about it.

I like it now when kids stare at me, because it is a way of starting a dialogue. And it is far better than them not looking at you at all. Nothing is worse than not being seen.

I have found great power in taking my 'difference' out for a spin in a very public way. And usually, the worst, most personally embarrassing thing you imagine in your mind is often not anywhere near as bad in real life.

The idea of prosthetics is a tool. Most people's cell phones are prosthetics. If you leave your cell phone at home, you feel impacted by not having it. It's an important part of your daily function and what you can do in a day.

I'll be giving a speech at the randomest place, like a bank or something, and a guy in a suit will say, 'I'm totally freaked out that I'm talking to the girl from 'Cremaster.' For the rest of my life, that movie will be playing in a museum somewhere. I never could have expected that huge response.

You know, I think there are certain words like 'illegitimate' that should not be used to describe a person. And certainly, we have come far enough in our technology that our language can evolve, because it has an impact.

I hate the words 'handicapped' and 'disabled'. They imply that you are less than whole. I don't see myself that way at all.

The flesh and bone leg is just beautiful. It's elegant. You know, when it's working, it's incredible. But if it's not working, well, you know, your life is certainly far from over.

I grew up in a town with a great wrestling tradition. Then I was a team sport queen in high school; I played softball, volleyball, and soccer. Oh, and I also did ski racing.

If you would ask me at 15 years old if I would have traded prosthetics for flesh and bone legs, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second. I aspired to that kind of normalcy back then. But if you ask me today, I'm not so sure.

I didn't want to be written about as a human-interest story. I didn't want to be a passing thing. You know, now we move on to the fat girl who had her stomach stapled. I didn't want to become a gimmick: the disabled model.

In sports, I refused to do any interviews that were just going to become human-interest stories. Don't turn me into a tragic heroine.

My varying pairs of legs can be quite practical or quite impractical, and I don't judge them either way. Some are for getting around a 12-hour day, pounding the pavement, and some are to feel like I can transform my own body into a workable, changing piece of art.

Sure, I'd love to have children some day. But world domination comes first.

I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me.

If you watch any John Hughes film of the eighties, that was my childhood experience.

A couple of years ago, I had my DNA sequencing done, and it is all anonymous. When the results came back, my musculature type said, 'most likely to be a sprinter.'

I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy. I don't speak for such huge and diverse groups. What I've tried to do, what I've been fortunate to do, is to live my live and create my life as I've wanted to create it.

True beauty is when someone radiates that they like themselves.