My dad told us up front 'Guys if you want to play sports go ahead but it's your decision.'

I wanted to perform well for my mom and dad because in high school I didn't have a job. My brothers they worked at Pizza Hut or places like that but sports that was my way of giving back.

Within our culture every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy basically.

I grew up in Chicago so I've always been a Bears fan. Dad used to take me to Bears games and Cubs games. My brother used to ride me over to Lake Forest College on his Honda Supersport and we'd watch the Bears practice. I remember those guys out there as monsters - they were the biggest things I've ever seen!

My sister is totally my dad's daughter because she loves sports.

I sort of always had an inkling towards some kind of an art form. I grew up in a very small town and I just figure-skated. My dad played hockey and I was surrounded by sports but it wasn't quite doing it for me. I wasn't totally fulfilled and I did a lot of skating.

One afternoon when I was 9 my dad told me I'd be skipping school the next day. Then we drove 12 hours from Melbourne to Sydney for the Centenary Test a once-in-a-lifetime commemorative cricket match. It was great fun - especially for a kid who was a massive sports fan.

Don't force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters not the parent's desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun.

I've told Billy if I ever caught him cheating I wouldn't kill him because I love his children and they need a dad. But I would beat him up. I know where all of his sports injuries are.

The presidents of colleges have to have some courage to step forward. You can't limit alcohol in college sports you have to get rid of it.

My band is so dedicated everybody works very hard. The No. 1 priority is the show and it's pretty cool because we all pull together and it's fun. It's like being on a sports team or something.

What drives me now is the fact that I feel like I still have so many tricks that I want to learn and so many things that I can still do. And so many cool things outside of sports that I have been doing.

It's cool just because I've had this dream of changing the sport of swimming and it's finally happening.

The idea that so many kids eat rubbish and sit on computers all day long appals me and getting them into sport is a major way of getting them off computers and leading healthier lives.

When I grew up we had gym at school two or three dance classes after school ice skating lessons and all sorts of sports at our finger tips. We weren't glued to computers because they didn't exist so being active was all we knew.

Measured in time of transport and communication the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.

The waste of capital in proportion to the total capital in this country between 1800 and 1850 in the attempts which were made to establish means of communication and transportation was enormous.