Top highlights from Carrie Soto Is Back
We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men.
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Some men's childhoods are permitted to last forever, but women are so often reminded that there is work to be done.
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Grief is like a deep, dark hole. It calls like a siren: Come to me, lose yourself here. And you fight it and you fight it and you fight it, but when you finally do succumb and jump down into it, you cant quite believe how deep it is. It feels as if this is how you will live for the rest of your life, falling. Terrified and devastated, until you yourself die.But that is the mirage. That is griefs dizzying spell. The fall isnt never-ending. It does have a ground floor.Today, I cry for so long that I finally feel the floor under my feet. I find the bottom. And while I know the hole will be there forever, at least for now, I feel as if I can live inside it. I have learned its boundaries and its edges.
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Falling inlove is really quite simple, she says. You want to know the secret?Its the same thing we are all doing about life every single day.I look to her.Forget theres an ending.
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People act like you can never forget your own name, but if youre not paying attention, you can veer so incredibly far away from everything you know about yourself to the point where you stop recognizing what they call you.
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They cant make us go away justbecause they are done with us
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My heart hurts when you hurt because you are my heart.
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My older self knows that you must stopin the middle of the chaosto take in the world around you. To breathe in deeply, smell the sunscreen and the rubber of the ball, let the breeze blow across your neck, feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. In this respect, I love the way the world has aged me.
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One of the great injustices of this rigged world we live in is that women are considered to be depleting with age and men are somehow deepening.
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Why do I have to be nice when most of the men arent?
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I am afraid of losing. I am afraid of how it will look to the world. Im afraid of this match being the last match my father ever sees me play. I am afraid of ending this all on a loss. I am afraid of so much.
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No matter how good I was on the court, I was never good enough for the public. It wasnt enough to play nearly perfect tennis. I had to do that and also be charming. And that charm had to appear effortless.
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Luckily, I did not need to be pretty. My body was built to wage war.
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When did I lose that? The delight of success? When did winning become something I needed in order to survive? Something I did not enjoy having, so much as panic without?
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I'm so grateful now, for every match and every win and every loss and every lesson that I have behind me. It feels so good, right now, to be thirty seven years old. To have figured at least some things out.
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I suspected the problem was that I was always the winner. But I could not for the life of me understand why that made people want to play with me less instead of more.
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For decades, my talent and drive were utterly devastating to those who stood in my wake. If each person is blessed with an induvial gift, determination is mine.
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You left! he says, his voice rising. And then he shakes his head and laughs to himself. You hurt your knee, you lost a couple matches, and you gave up. Thats what you did. Youre saying were the same, but were not. I stuck around. I had the guts to try. I have the guts to lose. You, you just run. Well, guess what, Carrie? People who are actually playing the game lose. We all lose. We lose all the time. That is life. So we are not the same, Soto. I have courage. Youre just good at tennis.
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I keep thinking, I dont cry on the court. I dont cry on the court. But then I think, Maybe its a lie that you have to keep doing what you have always done. That you have to be able to draw a straight line from how you acted yesterday to how youll act tomorrow. You dont have to be consistent. You can change, I think. Just because you want to. And so, for the first time in decades, I stand in front of a roaring crowd and cry.
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Maybe its a lie that you have to keep doing what you have always done. That you have to be able to draw a straight line from how you acted yesterday to how youll act tomorrow. You dont have to be consistent. You can change. Just because you want to.
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I have always known there is no mountain you cannot climb, one step at a time
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Mick Rivas kid? my dad said. I cannot stand that guy.
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My ambition has long felt oppressive. It is not a joyit is a master that I must answer to, a smoke that descends into my life, making it hard to breathe. It is only my discipline, my willingness to push myself harder, that has been my way through.
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Gwen smiles. Do you know what part of If is actually relevant right now? To this moment? If you can make one heap of all your winnings / And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, / And lose, and start again at your beginnings / And never breathe a word about your loss. She must be messing with me. Surely she knows shes just described my greatest fear. But no, I can tell from the look on her face that she sincerely thinks that Im that brave, that I am doing this because I am okay with losing big. Not because I am terrified of losing at all. And it stuns me silent, for a moment: just how vast the gap is between who I am and how people see me.
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But not thicker women, like me. Or dark-skinned women like Carla Perez or Suze Carter. Not women who are British Chinese, like Nicki, or downright scary in their intensity like her either. Not the women who arent skinny and white and smiling. And yet, no matter what type of woman you are, we all still have one thing in common: Once we are deemed too old, it doesnt matter who we used to be.
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It was okay to win as long as I acted surprised when I did and attributed it to luck. I should never let on how much I wanted to win or, worse, that I believed I deserved to win. And I should never, under any circumstances, admit that I did not believe all of my opponents were just as worthy as I was. The bulk of the commentators... they wanted a woman whose eyes would tear up with gratitude, as if she owed them her victory, as if she owed them everything she had.
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Grief is like a deep, dark hole. It calls like a siren: Come to me, lose yourself here. And you fight it and you fight it and you fight it, but when you finally do succumb and jump down into it, you can't quite believe how deep it is. It feels as if this is how you will live for the rest of your life, falling. Terrified and devastated, until you yourself die.
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This is the tiniest beginning of a terrible, beautiful whole new life.
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What I actually remember most about her is the emptiness she left behind. There was this sense, within the house, that there used to be someone else here. But now it was just my father and me.
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Falling in love is really quite simple, she says. You want to know the secret? Its the same thing we are all doing about life every single day. I look to her.Forget theres an ending.
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I am no longer the greatest tennis player in the world. For the first time in my life, I can be...something else.
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They can't make us go away just because they are done with us.
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Because you are not yet who you will one day be. I looked up at him, my guarded heart opening ever so slightly. Every match you play, you are one match closer to becoming the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen. You were not born that person. You were born to become that person. And that is why you must best yourself every time you get on the court. Not so that you beat the other person But so that I become more myself, I finished. Now youre getting it, my father said. You played the best tennis youve ever played in your life. And youre happy, I said. With me. Because I played great. Because you played the best you ever have. And every day I will play better and better, I said. Until one day, I am the greatest. Until youve reached the fullest of your potential. Thats the most important thing. We dont stop for one second until you are the best you can be, he said. We dont rest. Until its finally true. Algn da. Because then I will be who I was born to be.
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My older self knows that you must stopin the middle of the chaosto take in the world around you.
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Good is the enemy of great,
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Bowe looks at me and closes his eyes slowly. He takes a breath. You act like youve dedicated your life to tennis. But you came back to win, not to play. Thats why theyre all pissed at you for returning. Youve got no heart.
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Bowe shakes his head. Youre not, Soto. I know you cant see itbecause youre one of those annoying kids in school who thinks getting ninety-nine on the test only means you didnt get one hundred. It does mean that. Yeah, and there you go, ruining the curve for everybody else. And everyone hates me. I wish you could see it from the outside. See what? Bowe looks me in the eye and is quiet for a moment. And then he says, Eres perfecta, incluso en tu imperfeccin. I sit up, unsure I heard him right. But of course I did. His accent is terrible, but it has knocked the wind out of me just the same.
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I cant decide if I think Bowe is a good influence, standing up against an umpire biased for the opposition, or a terrible influence, a grown man throwing a temper tantrum when things dont go his way. But of course there are no absolute morals or lessons. Only perspectives. One mans bitch is another womans hero.
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Every match you play, you are one match closer to becoming the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen. You were not born that person. You were born to become that person.
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And like we talked about, everyone will be looking at you, looking to see if youre as good as theyve heard. Ignore all that. Just be gooddont try to prove it.
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We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men
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It is her right to have fun, to keep playing. To not help with dinner.
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I take the paper and open it. There are three Spanish phrases, all written out in his messy handwriting. You are perfect, even in your imperfection. You are completely insufferable, and I cant stop thinking about you. I want the real thing this time. You wrote these down? So you could say them to me? Yes. If I kiss you, will it hurt? I ask, moving closer to him. What? Your ribs. If I kiss you, will I hurt you? No, he says. I dont think so. I put both of my hands on his face and kiss him. He reaches his good arm across my lower back and pulls me toward him. Ive kissed him before, years ago. But this feels both familiar and brand-new, like a good stretch, like a deep breath. I dont know what this is, I say. I dont know if its the real thing or not. I dont care, he says, kissing me again. He grabs at the hem of my T-shirt and the buttons on my jeans. I dont want to hurt you. I dont care about that either, he says, kissing me again. You have to be careful, I say. Of your ribs. Carrie, please, he says, kissing my neck. Stop worrying. And so I do.
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I did not pick up a racket to grow tense and weary and afraid of failing. I picked it up to feel the joy of smashing a ball as hard as I can. I picked it up to spend time with my dad.
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My God, how hard it must have been for my father to do this. To sit here, a ball of nerves, knowing that all of the control was in my hands. He could not think for me on the court, he could not hit the ball for me. He just had to have faith that I could play the way hed taught me. What a gift it is, to be able to guide someone to a point and then let them finish it themself. To give someone all the knowledge you have and then pray they use it right. Its a skill I am learning, one I am determined to perfect.
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He believed in the beauty and simplicity of doing something the way it has always been done but better than anyone else has ever done it.
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What would he say if he were here? What would he have written in this book if he'd had more time? There are still things I need to know; there is still advice I need to get from him. There is more to do together.
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If I say your hair is purple, does that mean its purple? he asked. No, its brown.Does it mean you have to prove to me its brown? I shook my head.No, you can see it is.You are going to be one of the greatest tennis players in the world someday, cario. That is as true as your brown hair. You dont need to show them. You just need to be.
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You are perfect, even in your imperfection.
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Other women in tennisblond women with big boobs and long legsoften get modeling contracts at age seventeen. They show up on the cover of mens magazines within a year or so of hitting the court for the first time. But not thicker women, like me. Or dark-skinned women like Carla Perez or Suze Carter. Not women who are British Chinese, like Nicki, or downright scary in their intensity like her either. Not the women who arent skinny and white and smiling. And yet, no matter what type of woman you are, we all still have one thing in common: Once we are deemed too old, it doesnt matter who we used to be.
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Youre not playing your opponent, you understand that, yes? I stared at him, unsure. But I needed him to believe that I understood everything I was supposed to beit seemed like an unbearable betrayal of our mission for me to be confused about any of it. Every time you get out on that court, you must play a better tennis game than you played the time before. Did you play your best game of tennis today? No, I said. Next time, I want you to beat yourself. Every day you must beat the day before. I sat down on the bench next to me and considered. What my father was proposing was a much, much harder endeavor. But once the thought had been put in my head, I had to rise to it. I could not expel it. Entiendo, I said. Now go get your things. We are driving to the beach. No, Dad, I said. Please, no. Cant we just go home? Or what if we went out for ice cream? This girl in my class said there is a place that has great ice cream sandwiches. I thought we could go. He laughed. We are not going to condition your legs sitting around eating ice cream sandwiches. We can only do that by I frowned.
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I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. When I opened them, I couldnt look at my father. I looked out the window and watched as, across the street, a woman came out of her house and got her mail. I wondered if she was having a terrible day too. Or maybe her life looked nothing like mine. Maybe she lived free from all this pressure, this sense that she lived or died by how good she was at something. Was she burdened by the need to win everything she did? Or did she live for nothing?
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My father had hired me a hitter named Elena to help me work on my returns. Elena was almost twenty and had an incredible serve. I often wondered, as we played together, why she didnt hone the rest of her game to try to play professionally. But she seemed entirely uninterested. A fact that I was exceedingly unnerved by.
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I think I have done you a disservice, my father finally said, looking me in the eye. I told you from such a young age that you could be the very best. But I never explained to you that its about aiming for excellence, not about stats. What? I am just saying that when you were a child, I spoke ingrandiosities. But, Carrie, there is no actual unequivocal greatest in the world. Tennis doesnt work like that. The world doesnt work like that. Im not going to sit here and be insulted. How am I insulting you? I am telling you there is no one way to define the greatest of all time. Youre focusing right now on rankings. But what about the person who gets the most titles over the span of their career? Are they the greatest? How about the person with the fastest recorded serve? Or the highest paid? Im asking you to take a minute and recalibrate your expectations. Excuse me? I said, standing up. Recalibrate my expectations? Carrie, my father said. Please listen to me. No, I said, putting my hands up. Dont use your calm voice and act like youre being nice. Because youre not. Having someone on this planet who is as good as meor bettermeans I have not achieved my goal. If you would like to coach someone who is fine being second, go coach someone else. I threw my napkin down and walked out of the restaurant. I made my way through the lobby to the parking lot. I was still furious by the time my father caught up to me by my car. Carolina, stop, youre making a scene, he said. Do you have any idea how hard it is? I shouted. It felt shocking to me, to hear my own voice that loud. To give everything you have to something and still not be able to grasp it! To fail to reach the top day after day and be expected to do it with a smile on your face? Maybe Im not allowed to make a scene on the court, but I will make a scene here, Dad. It is the very least you can give me. Just for once in my life, let me scream about something! There were people gathering in the parking lot, and each one of them, I could tell, knew my name. Knew my fathers name. Knew exactly what they were witnessing. WHAT ARE YOU ALL LOOKING AT? GO ON ABOUT YOUR SAD LITTLE DAYS! I got in my convertible and drove away.
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Well, he said. The gap between the player you are today and the player you want to be I want to be the greatest tennis player in the world, I said. That gap is not big. We are talking about that vital half-percent improvement. And thats not found in changing your strategy. Its in shortening the nanosecond of time between getting to the ball and slicing it across the court. It is going to be found in the minute change you make to the angle of your serve. The details are fine, and they are going to get finer. It is going to be nearly imperceptible, the ways we need to change your game. No one will be able to see it from the outside, but Stepanova is going to feel it. Every time she loses to you for the next ten years. I could feel my pulse in my ears; my face felt hot. Okay, I said. How do we do that? Are you cross-training? he asked. I run and do drills. Lars laughed. Thats not enough. Stepanova is right about one thingyou need to lose at least a couple pounds. We need you doing sprints, lunges, weight training. You can jump higher to hit overheads. You rarely doits a weakness in your game, in my opinion. I want to see what happens when you blast off the court into the air. Take out some of Stepanovas lobs before they hit the ground. We start there and see where we get. No, I said, shaking my head. If we are doing this, I need to know right now that you believe I can bury her. That I can be number one. If I am your coach and you do not become the number-one-ranked player for the year, he said, I will be disgusted.
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Bowe leans forward on the table and moves his drink out of the way. This guy, the Inner Game of Tennis guy, he talks about two selves. Self 1 and Self 2. Self 1 says, Cmon, Huntley! Get it together! Self 2 is the Huntley whos supposed to be doing the getting it together. I say, I get you so far. Self 2 is doing all the work, right? Self 2 is going to win you the game. Self 2 is the hero. Self 1 just yells and gets frustrated and gets in the way.
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Just smile and nod, Gwen says. How hard is that?Very, I say. I hate half these people. I hate half of all people
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But I feel the exact opposite. I feel like its taken decades to get here. You told me I was supposed to be the greatest player in the history of tennis. You said it since the day I was born! You told me it was all I was ever meant to be! And then one day I wasnt anymore. You werent even sure that I could beat her! I say. Are we talking about Stepanova? he says. I asked you if you thought I could get the number one ranking over her, and you said, I dont know. And youve never forgiven me for it, he says. Im paying that price even today. You should pay it for the rest of your life! I say. For making me believe in myself like that and then pulling the rug out from under me. For giving up on me when things were at their hardest. I never gave up on this. Ever. And you did! Carrie, you asked me if I thought you could take number one from Paulina. And I said I didnt know. Because I didnt. I dont know what the future holds. And I cant promise the world is going to always turn out the way you want it to. I owed you that honesty, I thought. So you could assess betterhow to grow, how to widen your perspective. It felt like it was time for that. But you didnt want to do that then, and you dont want to do that now. Ive messed up a lot as your father, and I take responsibility for that. But this one, Im sorry, only you can solve it. You have to make peace with not being a perfect player, he said. That is giving up. I wont do it, I said. My father shakes his head. You have to find a way to be right with who you actually are, to face what life is really like. I expected you to figure that out by now. But you havent. And if you dont, I cant see how you ever get past thisthis moment. You have accomplished so much, but you are instead so focused on keeping it, rather than going out and finding something else in the world. He walks toward the door. Everything we achieve is ephemeral. We have it, and then the next second its gone. You had that record, and you may lose that record. Or you may defend it now and lose it in two years all over again. I wish youd accept that. I shake my head and try to look at him. I cant. Well, he says. It kills me that I cannot fix that for you, hija. But I cant. Nobody else can. And then, as if the door were the lightest thing in the world, he opens it and walks right through, leaving me there alone.
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It is still early as I get out of bed. The sun has not yet risen. I feel a sense of control that I sometimes get when I wake up before the rest of the world. I have the feeling that the days events are mine to determine, that I hold everything in the palm of my hand.
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Nicki keeps her eyes focused entirely on watching the trainer wrap her foot. But her next words are aimed squarely at me. I dont think youve ever understood what I can do. What I am doing. I do, I say. I see it. I am better than you, she says. Give me a break, Nicki. You think that if this was 1982, I wouldnt stand a chance against you, Nicki continues. I know that if this was 1982, you wouldnt stand a chance against me, I say. Because its 1995, and you dont stand a chance against me. Nicki scoffs. You just cant see it. How good you are? I say. I see how good you are. You dont respect what Ive done for tennis the way I respect what youve done. What have you done that I havent done? Nicki turns and looks at me. Her gaze is heavy. Im the first Asian woman to ever win Wimbledon. The first woman like me to do almost any of the things Ive done in tennishitting these records. Because we both know tennis doesnt make it easy for those of us who arent blond and blue-eyed. Yes, I say, nodding. Absolutely.
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