Jackie Joyner-Kersee Quotes

11 Sourced Quotes

I learned to listen and listen very well. It helped me athletically and in the classroom as well. The person who talks a lot or talks over people misses out because they weren't listening.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Ask any athlete: We all hurt at times. I'm asking my body to go through seven different tasks. To ask it not to ache would be too much.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
For me it's the challenge, the challenge to try to beat myself and do better than I did in the past. I try to keep in mind not what I have accomplished but what I have to try to accomplish in the future.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
I'm a realist, and I always have been. Quality training is what I do now; before it was a combination of both quality and quantity. Now I'm not trying to be a world-class athlete; I don't need to train at that level. It's about being fit, fit for life.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
At times I've been frustrated. I'm a competitor, and you want things overnight. But I've been enjoying myself. The team atmosphere is so different from track and field.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
From being a cheerleader at the youth center, I knew at the age of nine that I could jump. That's when I started running and jumping off my porch.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
There is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Jumping has always been the thing to me. It's like leaping for joy, but of course there's more to it than that. Galina Chistyakova [U.S.S.R.] has just done 25 feet, Heike Drechsler [G.D.R.] is on the runway and I'm behind her. You have to respond here and now. It lets you know what you're made of.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
I don't know what's going to happen, but I didn't want to sit at home and do 'shoulda-coulda-woulda'.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
I don't have to be enemies with someone to be competitors with them.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee
I don't think being an athlete is unfeminine. I think of it as a kind of grace.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee