Quotes from Abby Wambach

I've always had a dream of owning a restaurant.

I'm fiercely patriotic, and the flag and the anthem is something that I really, really respect.

When you're a pro athlete, life is very narcissistic - everything relates back to you and how you play. When you are getting out of pro sports, you suddenly have to get a little more mindful of what's going on around you and how you affect the rest of the world.

I'm not sure if I'm going to get into coaching. I'm sure I'll stay in soccer somehow.

My nephew has type 1 diabetes, and it's my goal and hope that in his lifetime there will be a cure for diabetes. There's no place better to give the money to than the Juvenile Diabetes Association.

One thing I love to do when I'm working out is take my watch off, take my heart strap off, and just run - not for time, not for exertion, but just to get the blood flowing.

For any athlete growing up, the Olympics is the one thing you watch with your family, and it's the one thing you dream about. Seeing your country's flag go up as you get a gold medal is the best thing you can achieve.

When I look in the mirror, I don't see a person who's made the kind of impact that Mia Hamm made on the game. She's still my idol, the greatest player and the greatest teammate. She achieved so much in so many different ways. What she did for women's soccer can't be measured.

This might sound masochistic or narcissistic, I don't know, but when I'm not playing the game, the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness, in a lot of ways, when I'm not playing.

I know that I was put on this planet to be an athlete.

I always wanted to be more validated as a human being, as a person, than I was as a player. I think that was a really hard balance for me.

Sometimes if you have a coach or team-mates for too long, you get caught in certain routines. I think it's good to shake up things a little bit.

I am not a politician by nature, but I will say I think there need to be more women in FIFA, and I would be open to having those conversations when the time is right.

I'm not in the business of politics.

I've always been motivated more by negative comments than by positive ones. I know what I do well. Tell me what I don't do well.

I am going to change the world, and I'm talking to everybody in the possible world that I can get to that can help me to do that.

I've never scored a goal in my life without getting a pass from someone else.

I'm pretty goofy. I laugh at my own jokes.

Any good attacker will always beat a defender who's face-marking you.

When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players.

My teammates have put me in all different kinds of positions to score goals, and I can't say it enough, and I really through and through believe it in my heart that I'm only as good as my teammates allow me to be.

It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates, and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings.

I'm going to do anything I can do - whether that's being part of FIFA or creating some sort of movement that can actually impart real equality across all lines - in every country, every city, every sector all over the world, that's what I'm going to do.

Your heart can only take you so far - sometimes the physical body tells you otherwise.