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[on his dwarfism] When I was younger, definitely, I let it get to me. As an adolescent, I was bitter and angry and I definitely put up these walls. But the older you get, you realize you just have to have a sense of humour. You just know that it's not your problem. It's theirs.

What really matters is not whether we have problems, but how we go through them. We must keep going on to make it through whatever we are facing.

I took a lot of bad things after Athens. I just learnt to deal with it. The problem was beforehand I had this feeling where I was trying to please everybody - I wanted everybody to like me.

We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears.

I've spent the last decade learning to stand firm and face my problems… or at least batter them until they're unrecognizable.

I don't really know how to do anything else except music. But I do. I've never felt more comfortable doing it. When I was put into arenas and stadiums when I was 27, I always thought somebody was going to say, 'No, they're not here for you.' You don't quite believe that they actually like you, because it's an extreme change in your life. Which is insane really, because they bought the ticket. So you start feeling more comfortable in your skin the more you do something, or the older you get.

Occasionally I’ll be sitting somewhere and I’ll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I’ll look down at my hand and I’ll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have.

I am manageable. I, you know, it'll suffice I think. No, no, I feel pretty good. I trained for a long time and I got really cool, like I was doing jumps. It got like, I felt really good, but then when I got out on gravel and fake snow and - it just kind of all went downhill. But I think it's still okay.

I have a lot of insecurities, but you learn from your failures.

Unless I try, I'm never really going to be at ease with myself.

No one has a resume that they are 100% comfortable with, nor does anyone have a life that they are 100% comfortable with.

The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

As for kids who are struggling personally, ignore the bullies! Who cares what they think? A lot of the time, they're not thinking, so you shouldn't take their words to heart. Ignore, ignore, ignore, and keep pushing forward.

I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

A lot of things have been thrown at me in life, and I've got through it all without a rule book, taking it one day at a time.

I never have been insecure, because I see what a waste it is. I know there is a solution to insecurity. I don't tend to be thrown by problems that don't have solutions. And insecurity has a wealth of alternatives.

I wish I had tougher skin, but I don't.

I admire people who are completely at ease with themselves. But I don't have that feeling.

Personally, I've struggled with a lot of doubt in myself at times.

The cognitive skills that underpin resilience, then, seem like they can indeed be learned over time, creating resilience where there was none.

It's not easy to filter out all the negative things people say and/or write about you.

Sometimes things don't go exactly as you'd wish. You have to be mentally strong to overcome those moments.

Life moves forward, and you have to deal with whatever it throws at you.

At times when you transform yourself and when you've opened too much, you tend to doubt how you're going to face it, how you're going to react to a situation, so it's important that you believe yourself.

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.