Cathy Rigby Quotes

#1. An athlete learns how to hold her breath, but that doesn't work in singing. You have to learn to relax.

Cathy Rigby

#2. It's that athlete's obsessiveness - the need to prove yourself and work harder than anybody else. I think it's what helped me do well in the theater.

Cathy Rigby

#3. I never realized until recently how much my life parallels Peter Pan.

Cathy Rigby

#4. I just like to act.

Cathy Rigby

#5. Acting allows me the freedom to let go, to be in the moment, to be spontaneous. I no longer have the fear of losing, of failure.

Cathy Rigby

#6. Seeing the show is like a visit to the fountain of youth for parents and the children.

Cathy Rigby

#7. I grew up in a sport that didn't allow you to grow up. There was always the threat of younger competition. So you had to maintain the image of youth.

Cathy Rigby

#8. The thing I received from Girl Scouts more than anything else was a sense of real teamwork and working for the community, helping others, and it was not competitive. I remember working as a group to achieve a goal or to help the community. There was a great sense of accomplishment in that.

Cathy Rigby

#9. In high school I never went to the prom because I was too consumed with gymnastics. Also, with my hair in pigtails and looking about 10, I wasn't exactly date material.

Cathy Rigby

#10. Actually, performing is a lot like golf. You are alone, so vulnerable.

Cathy Rigby

#11. I'll talk to kids afterward and somebody will always say, 'I'll leave my bedroom window open for you.

Cathy Rigby

#12. I will jump into most any role.

Cathy Rigby

#13. Flying is such a joy. You just want to hoot.

Cathy Rigby

#14. I have three dogs and a cockatoo.

Cathy Rigby

#15. There's no disgrace in failure, the disgrace is not to try.

Cathy Rigby

#16. It's really hard to separate fantasy from reality.

Cathy Rigby

#17. Our athletes are our heroes.

Cathy Rigby

#18. When you're on the Olympic team at 15, you don't do anything else. There's no normal social development, and your decisions are made for you.

Cathy Rigby

#19. You see your peers weighing 80 pounds and you think, 'Oh, my God, I've got to be 80 pounds or I'll fail.'

Cathy Rigby

#20. Nowadays a gold medal is a $1 million contract. Our athletes are our heroes.

Cathy Rigby

#21. So it really does have a sort of bittersweet quality. Kids like to have adventures and to believe they can fly, but there's also that fear about people leaving you.

Cathy Rigby

#22. I remember secretly going off and crying. All of a sudden I'm being blocked and have to be intimate in a scene, and I'm going, 'I can't even look people in the eye very well. How am I ever going to do this?'

Cathy Rigby

#23. There's so much denial in gymnastics. It's a beautiful sport but the other part is numbing. You become machinelike. They'll refute this, but I've been around it. I know.

Cathy Rigby

#24. I've been able to play a kid up to this point and pretend that I'm not a grown-up - well, at least for two hours a night!

Cathy Rigby

#25. I would climb on roofs and jump off using my parents' bed sheet, hoping it would open like a parachute. I was always getting hurt, breaking a leg, you know, bruising, cracking my head open.

Cathy Rigby