A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
A girl didn't get an athletic scholarship until the fall of 1972 for the very first time.
Any therapist will tell you that when you're ready, you will come out. To be outed means you weren't ready.
At 62 you want to keep moving; that's important.
Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball.
Champions keep playing until they get it right.
Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn't allowed in a photo because I wasn't wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.
Everyone has people in their lives that are gay, lesbian or transgender or bisexual. They may not want to admit it, but I guarantee they know somebody.
For me, personally, it was mainly concern about hurting everybody else as well as myself.
Hopefully, we'll make the world a safer place so young people will feel safe to deal with their sexuality.
I always liked co-ed events best so we have two men and two women on each team.
I always wanted to help make tennis a team sport.
I call them the first generation of men of the women's movement. They have tears in their eyes, they're in their late 40s and 50s.
I come from a family that is very conservative. They always paid their bills. If they didn't have the money, we didn't get it.
I did a video along with Martina and others for the last one in New York. What's great about the Gay Games is that anyone can participate. And it's great socially.
I didn't really care if I had a coach that much, me personally, because I was brought up to think for myself.
I have a lot to say, and if I'm not No. 1, I can't say it.
I have people every single day since that match come up to me. The men, if they are in their 30s and 40s, tell me how that changed their lives, and if they have daughters and sons, tell me they have a very different feel about how they want their daughters to be treated because of seeing that match.
I knew after my first lesson what I wanted to do with my life.
I know that wasn't clear, looking back, but at the time I was in such a mess. It was so tumultuous. But I'm thinking, I'm married to Larry. I should stay married to him.
I like entrepreneurial people; I like people who take risks.
I like putting money back into what made my life, and tennis has been great to me.
I love to promote our sport. I love grass-roots tennis. I love coaching. I love all parts of the sport. I love the business side.
I take my Fun Mon and I put it in and if I get lucky, great. If I don't, so be it.
I think it's impossible to judge whether another person should come out. You just hope they will on their own time and their own terms.
I think my reflex is, It could hurt business.
I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.
I think younger players probably just think they are who they are-they don't think about coming out. Unless you're number one in the world, nobody cares, usually.
I used to be told if I talked about my sexuality in any way that we wouldn't have a tennis tour.
I want to get the names of people who are in the trenches, doing the work, and give awards.
I wanted to use sports for social change.
I was always in the tennis business-from 1968. I was in tournaments and also on World Team Tennis teams as well.
I will tell you King's First Law of Recognition: You never get it when you want it, and then when it comes, you get too much.
I would just never out anybody. I think everyone has to find it in their own way and their own time.
I would love to be a player today. I had the right personality for it.
I'd just like to uplift the coaching area and the teaching, because the teachers are in the trenches every day.
I'm always getting into businesses where it's not just me that I'm affecting. It's really tough if I hurt the business, because it ends up hurting others.
I've done all kinds of meetings in the past year and a half, just getting up to speed on what's going on.
I've just been working very quietly. I've done my due diligence to try to get caught up with the different organizations so that I know what's truly going on.
If I can hit a couple of singles and maybe one home run in a lifetime, great.
If your partner wants to be private, you have to respect that.
In 1973, a woman could not get a credit card without her husband or father or a male signing off on it.
In 1973, women got 59 cents on the dollar; now we are getting 74 cents on the dollar. In the area of finance and business, we are at 68 cents on the dollar.
In my business, I have my Rock Money I am not allowed to touch, and then I have my Fun Mon that I go into more of a high-risk area if I want.
In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.
It is lessons in life that you have to hang onto when things are tough.
It is very hard to be a female leader. While it is assumed that any man, no matter how tough, has a soft side... and female leader is assumed to be one-dimensional.
It's fun to meet people from throughout the world who you don't have to explain yourself to.
It's just really important that we start celebrating our differences. Let's start tolerating first, but then we need to celebrate our differences.
Martina and I went through a very bad five years. Everything's very good between us now, but it was a long haul.
Martina has a personality that doesn't ever, ever worry about consequences, which is probably what everybody needed.
Martina's gone with people who don't want to be out, and it drives her crazy because she'd rather be open.
Men can have a huge turnover of sponsorship and still survive a lot better than the women. But the women's ratings are better, at least at home in the United States than in the men's tennis.
Men still get a lot more opportunity. It is still a big part of the old boy network. They have more companies they can get money from.
Most young people today cannot imagine, a boy or a girl, without a credit card.
My dream is for someday that the World Team Tennis format is in the Olympics as our team sport for tennis.
No one changes the world who isn't obsessed.
People don't even stop to take a breath and start figuring it out.
People don't realize a lot of things. I was trying to get a divorce from him, and he didn't want to give me one. Unless you know each person's situation, you don't know why they act the way they act. You have to try to have compassion.
Sports are a microcosm of society.
Sports teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose-it teaches you about life.
Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity.
That is where the power, opportunity, and choice come from-when you have money. Money equals opportunity. There is no question.
The gay community never felt that way, that's for sure-when I said it was a mistake, I meant it was a mistake because of the monogamy issue, not because of the gender.
The main thing is to care. Care very hard, even if it is only a game you are playing.
The old boy network is still very strong and very true. Just look at the stock exchange and how many men and women are there. It is still very much run by men.
There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim.
They're not put on earth to be martyrs; they have to want to come out. It depends on your culture, where you work, where you live. Each person's circumstances are unique.
Today I would be in hog heaven, but I also get a lot of gratification on what we all did to change the landscape and climate of our sport.
Victory is fleeting. Losing is forever.
We have a long way to go, and it is really in the area of business.
We won the gold in basketball, soccer, softball, and rhythmic gymnastics. That is just a reflection of how women are finally having more choices and doing their thing.
When describing what I did, I try to set the scene-to tell them that Watergate was heating up, that it was the height of the Women's Movement.
When I was outed, it was like, That's done.
When they take surveys of women in business, of the Fortune 500, the successful women, 80% of them, say they were in sports as a young woman.
When we reach the point where the women athletes are getting their pick of dates just as easily as the men athletes, then we've really and truly arrived. Parity at last!
With the stock market the way it is right now, we have to be patient.
Women get the attention when we get into the men's arena, and that's sad.
Women of color today are making 59 cents, just like the Caucasian women were making in 1973, so they are 30 years behind right now, the women of color.
Women's sports is still in its infancy. The beginning of women's sports in the United States started in 1972, with the passage of Title 9 for girls to finally get athletic scholarships.
Yes, we all knew that was baloney, so we all went through that.
In 1971, Billie had an abortion. In an interview with 60 Minutes she said that her and her then-husband, Lawrence King, were not ready to have children at that time, because both were busy with their careers and could not devote time to children.
In 1971 Billie became the first woman athlete to earn over $100,000 in prize money.
Billie's father was a fire fighter.
Billie has won a total of 67 Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles titles.
Billie's brother, Randy Moffitt, was a baseball player who pitched for eleven years for the San Francisco Giants, Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays.
In November 1988 Billie published the book "We Have Come A Long Way" about womens rights.
Billie has been runner-up in 6 Grand Slams. In 1963 she lost to Margaret Smith Court in the Wimbledon final. She lost to her again in the final of the U.S Open in 1965, the Australian Open in 1969, and again at Wimbledon in 1970. In 1968 Virginia Wade beat her in the final at the U.S Open 6/4 6/2. She lost against Ann Hayden Jones in the final of Wimbledon in 1969.
Billie is ranked No.6 on Racquet magazine's "Most Powerful People in Tennis" list.
In 1996 and in 2000 Billie was the US Olympic tennis team captain.
Billie's win-loss record in doubles is 87-37.
Billie's total career prize money was $1,966,487.
In 1990 ,Life magazine named Billie as one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century".
Billie was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame on July 18, 1987.
Billie's friends call her "Jillie Bean".
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