I fell in love with skateboarding because it was individual; there were no teams, there were no captains, there was nothing to perfect. No style that had to be measured. It was completely opposite of what I saw in so many sports. It was creative. And to this day, that's what I love, that's always kept me back to it because it's endless creation.
Interpretation
Skateboarding represents personal freedom and creativity, devoid of rigid structures.
In this quote, Rodney Mullen expresses his deep affection for skateboarding as a uniquely individualistic activity that allows for endless creativity and self-expression. Unlike traditional sports, which often involve teams, rigid structures, and standards to measure performance, skateboarding emphasizes personal style and innovation. This freedom and lack of constraints are what draw Mullen back to skateboarding continually.
In practice
During an interview about personal passions, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of individuality.
Skateboarding is as much, or more, an art of mode of expression than it is a sport. What skateboarding has given me is precisely that: a form of expression that drew me to it, and, in so doing, I was able to express and be who I wanted to be through it, in a sense.
My career is as an actress. I am an actress playing a comedienne.
Poems - crystallizations of the universal play of analogy, transparent objects which, as they reproduce the mechanism and the rotary motion of analogy, are waterspouts of new analogies.
As for me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because this self-lust has a delightful dying fall in my soul.
For me, writing time has always been precious, something I wait for and am eager for and make the best use of. That's probably why I get up so early and have writing time in the quiet dawn hours, when no one needs me.
Burmese authors and artists can play the role that artists everywhere play. They help to mold the outlook of a society - not the whole outlook, and they are not the only ones to mold the outlook of society, but they have an important role to play there.
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
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