As a professional ballet dancer, I have to accept that weekends are about work. The notion of a leisurely break with all the buzz and excitement of a Friday night simply doesn't exist for me.
The discipline that ballet requires is obsessive. And only the ones who dedicate their whole lives are able to make it. Your toenails fall off and you peel them away and then you're asked to dance again and keep smiling. I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer.
I actually quit ballet when I was offered a job, an apprenticeship at North Carolina Dance Theater Company, run by John Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride, who are my idols. Everything sort of went perfectly. I was 16, and I was about to drop out of high school and become a professional ballet dancer.
Little did I know that there's nothing more competitive in the world than a professional ballroom dancer. They are as competitive as Olympic athletes.
I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.
Professional tennis has become an extremely physical and unbelievably competitive sport. Injuries are the bane of tennis players, and it goes with the territory.
Barney was interested in bringing professional boxing back to Northern Ireland in a big way.
I'm not Ken Shamrock the MMA World Champion No Holds Barred fighter. I'm Ken Shamrock, The World's Most Dangerous Man. Professional wrestling and MMA champion.
That's how easy baseball was for me. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I had the knowledge before I became a professional baseball player to do all these things and know what each guy would hit.
Growing up, I actually wanted to be a professional baseball player instead of a radio DJ. Believe it or not.
When I went to high school, my most passionate desire was to be a professional baseball player. But something within me told me that was not going to happen.
We have to connect to our fans through the media, and when you talk about that, it's got to come from your heart. And when it comes from your heart, it has to be absolutely consistent. There's a big risk you take without an interpreter because, as professional baseball players, we are here to perform baseball, not to learn a language.
While most American labor unions have struggled for the past several decades, professional baseball players comprise one of the strongest packs of organized workers in the world.
There have been players with Indian heritage, but there hasn't been a Native-American professional basketball player who became a regular for all sorts of social and political reasons.
I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.
I can take a beginner kid that has never danced in their lives, and I can teach them something, or I can take a really advanced dancer, and I can make them into a professional.
As a professional, I think we're not being judged solely on technical ability anymore. People really want to be entertained and enjoy what they're watching.
When I watch professional football, I love listening to John Madden because I know he knows what he's talking about. He's been both down in the trenches and in front of the bench as a coach. He knows the game.
Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.
I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.