Emmanuel Adebayor Quotes

I was born with fairly serious scoliosis, and I did not walk at all until I was about two-and-a-half years old.

I was actually in an iron lung for about a year, and then I was paralysed from the neck down for another year after that. So I spent a lotta time just lying down as a kid. And some of my earliest memories from then are of listening to the radio.

The hardest thing for me is walking. Can you imagine you've got a metal pole and if you put pressure on it like a strong walk, you can walk.

I am doing better now though one of my legs is shorter than the other due to the operations.

Let me make this clear: my impairment is such that without a wheelchair, I can't do very much for myself. I can't get out of bed. I can't get myself to the toilet. I certainly can't get myself to work.

The flesh and bone leg is just beautiful. It's elegant. You know, when it's working, it's incredible. But if it's not working, well, you know, your life is certainly far from over.

I've had versions of disability my whole life, first with my hearing and then when I couldn't walk for over a year.

At one stage I was using crutches on stage and couldn't walk more than 20 yards but a hip replacement in 2010 sorted that out.

I use an electric wheelchair because I have no sense of balance, and muscle spasticity has arched my spine like a cat's, while my legs are really just for show.

I've always found people with physical disabilities interesting to watch: how the dynamics of their body work, what makes them move this way or that.

At the time I was asked if I would ever step back in a race car, but what was very important for me was to go into the bathroom and pee on my own, but I could not do that. I had to be helped. That was my number one priority.

If you're missing three or four limbs, you have special challenges going forward. And the last thing you want is to not be independent in your home.

I still find it strange, I suppose, when I say to someone, 'Can you just pass me my leg?' But I don't ever think about my disability.

I think it was hard at first for my dad to transition to being immobile.

I fell and broke my pelvic bone in three places. So, I'm still sort of an invalid now.

It's factual to say I am a bilateral-below-the-knee amputee. I think it's subjective opinion as to whether or not I am disabled because of that. That's just me.

Then I got a bad back injury, and they thought I wasn't going to have any feeling in my legs.

I am not the paraplegic seated permanently in his chair or the able-bodied person on her feet. Identity for a hemiplegic is a shifty thing.

I've had journalists asking me, 'What do we call you - is it handicapped, are you disabled, physically challenged?' I said, 'Well hopefully you could just call me Aimee. But if you have to describe it, I'm a bilateral below-the-knee amputee.'

I was told as a teenager that I would never walk again.

If you're injured, it changes the way you move. If you're injured, it changes the way you talk.

I got injured when I was a kid, and it prevented me from becoming a footballer.

It finally became clear to me that they had no hopes of my ever walking again.

My mother, Laura Sumner, had cerebral palsy. She was born absolutely fine, but after about three days, she started having convulsions that left her with a condition that would confine her to a wheelchair her entire life.

I guess, when I go there in the centre, when I do my rehabilitation, I look at the people with only one leg and I actually envy them because I'd love to have one leg. I guess the ones that only have one leg, they envy the ones that they are only missing one leg below the knee, and on and on.