"I think it’s important to feel confident in what you’re wearing, so now I take the approach that I’m going to wear something because I think it looks cool. I don’t care what anybody else thinks."

"As I’ve got older I’ve realised that I don’t need to prove myself every single minute and wind people up by doing it."

"There’s always another trophy to win."

"I think if you stop and look too much at those accolades, you might forget that there’s always more you can do."

"People aren’t going to like you 24/7, people don’t like me 24/7."

"Everyone loves the accolades, everyone loves people saying “oh you’re the best player” but what happens when that stops? Where are you going to get your motivation from? You have to have your own motivation to be able to keep you at the top."

"I think it’s easy to take motivation from other people. When people have great things to say about you, who doesn’t like that."

"People write you off as a right back. The superstar is the striker or the playmaker."

"It’s important for experienced players to remember that younger players are aspiring to be like you and will copy your actions as well as what you say."

"Naturally, you’re just always looking for the best in everything you do and football is no different. We want it to be a huge spectacle."

"There’s part of you as a female athlete where you have to be grateful for what you get but also pushing to get more."

"If you want to get rid of any discrimination you have to really go to the heart of it and it can’t be about doing things because they look nice or enhance somebody’s reputation. It has to be heartfelt and there needs to be a desire to actually make a real change to the game behind the scenes."

"There’s now a place for women in the game to speak about their journeys and what has happened to them on the way. I think small changes are being addressed but for me I think a lot of what we see is more token gestures."

"There was no stereotypical roles in my household and I think that allowed both myself and my siblings to be raised in a way like that where there was no judgement. It was just support."

"That feeling of winning is so addictive. And the feeling of not winning is super horrible as well – I’m not a great loser."

"Having already played abroad, I know it’s so important to be able to communicate. I want to speak to everyone, I want to be friends with everyone, so it’s important that I learn."

"I wanted to be playing with the best players in the world and learn a different style of the game. I’ve found another way to enjoy football. I’ve fallen in love with football again."

"But while I’m in the thick of it, it’s always about, ‘What can I do next? What is the next thing I haven’t won or the mission I haven’t completed?’"

"I’ve always had the view that, when I’ve retired and I look back on my career, then I’ll be happy and proud of my achievements."

"I’m constantly striving for the next thing, the next victory, the next landmark in my career. I suppose it’s one of the best assets, but it also means I’m never truly satisfied with what I have or what I have just achieved."

"The confidence you have in yourself is going to be the thing to get where you want to go. Rely on that confidence in yourself and not someone else’s opinion of you."

"I’m not thinking in that moment. When I’m playing my best, I’m free flowing. I’m just doing what I feel is on, finding the space naturally."

"Growing up, I always loved the creative side of the game."

"There are so many incredible players on the national team. They feed me the ball and then I can feed them the ball. Honestly, they make me look good."

"I think when you turn pro, it becomes so much more important to take care of your body."

"But whatever you tell them, the youngsters are always going to feel the nerves. I think my job is to help them ride the wave until they, too, can relax and truly enjoy the game."

"For me, having this open dialogue is what allows us to speak our minds frankly on the pitch. As a team, I can sense a growing unity, where everyone’s voice is heard. I think we’re becoming a unit that can fight hard and push in one direction."

"The priority for me as a captain has always been to build a team where age doesn’t matter."

"I wanted to give them that feeling of you are special, you are incredible, No matter what your accomplishments are, you are just as good as everybody else. I wanted them to feel like they were competing at the Olympics and now that they had made it, this is your moment, now just go out there and enjoy."

"That was a moment that I was proud of because everyone constantly says, ‘Oh, you’re not strong.’ ‘You’re too this.’ ‘You’re too that.’ But to show that, yeah, I’m not physically the strongest one there, but I still was able to do something like that was a moment that made me proud."

"I think for me, the biggest thing was my integrity being on the line, my integrity being questioned essentially. I didn’t win the Olympics with special treatment. I didn’t want to be there with special treatment."

"The more that we can be honest and talk about if we're struggling, or we're feeling self-conscious, and we can normalize that conversation, I think we'd be surprised how many other people actually feel self-conscious, too,"

"I had no idea how much support I would receive or how much support so many of my teammates and other brave people who spoke out would get"

"Your teammates will remember you for the type of teammate you were. I think who you are when you don't win and how you support your teammates says so much more about you than who you are when you win"

"What my mom would say to me is that people will remember who you are, for the kind of person you are, rather than what grade you get on a test, or if you win a soccer game or a basketball game."

"I look back at my career and I am so thankful for all of the small things that my parents did. I think the best thing that they did was make sure I knew that I was loved for being me, not for gymnastics, not for awards but they were going to love me regardless of any of that."

"I would say that I figured out a way to kind of combat the negative thoughts. It’s not that they didn’t come in. But I would really try very hard when those negative thoughts were coming in, I would immediately thinnk of two things that were positive and I would force myself to try to push that negative thought to the curb … and it’s not always easy and didn’t always happen 100% of the time but I tried really hard to stay focused on the positive."

"I think it was. I think growing up very shy, it was easier for me to block out things going on around me and that’s very helpful when you’re on the balance beam and there’s a million different things going on. I just could very naturally do that. And it really became a skill."

"I think when people are able to bring that passion and they’re able to enjoy what they do it carries over onto other people."

"I chose to put my proceeds towards getting more women involved in leadership roles in football, which I think is important, especially as a woman in football myself. Just having coaches or people working on technical staff, even physios… just having women in that environment alongside men is important."

"It’s hard because sometimes I think with social media people put out what they want people to see. I’m trying to get more comfortable with putting out what is actually there and not always just the super-positive stuff or how people maybe envision what I’m like."

"To win the World Cup is the pinnacle of the sport."

"Every day you can only get better, you have to be consistent, you have to be improving, to be in the starting team or to get game-time."

"You want to fight and you want to give everything every time you put it on and I think that's the special thing of it. You represent this club and you're part of the family now."

"Society makes it really hard for the men but if you colour your hair green or red I don’t care. It’s your life."

"I wish every gay footballer can come out and be accepted by everybody."

"There are more important things than money."

"We don’t count the years. We count the caps."

"The biggest problem is there’s never really enough funding for a woman to complete all the steps, It’s opportunity, what team you’re in, the funding you have and so forth. I was expecting someone to come up when I saw one or two drivers come up that had a fair amount of talent, but they never quite got to where they needed to go."

"In my era, there were so few women that were racing at my level, You never really thought about yourself as: ‘I’m a woman in this race.’ You don’t think of yourself as something else. I was always the underdog because I never had funding and I was always given these cars to drive without any practice — I was always thrown in the deep end. For me it was always a concentration of what I was doing in this race car."