Tony Hawk

I love snowboarding, but I would never want to do it competitively or at a professional level. Snowboarding is a spawn of skating, and skating is my passion.

There's a stigma to skating. People think of it as a kid's sport. People kept telling me I couldn't possibly make a living out of it. Then they said I couldn't keep it up in my 30s. And here I am in my 40s, and I'm still improving my skills.

I consider skateboarding an art form, a lifestyle and a sport. 'Action sport' would be the least offensive categorization.

There are endorsements I regret taking when I was younger and didn't know any better. But I didn't have options then. People weren't knocking on my door.

The pro skaters I know are responsible members of society. Many of them are fathers, homeowners, world travelers and successful entrepreneurs. Their hairdos and tattoos are simply part of our culture, even when they raise eyebrows during PTA meetings.

You might not make it to the top, but if you are doing what you love, there is much more happiness there than being rich or famous.

When I started skating, it was such a small community. You didn't aspire to be rich or famous or make a career out of it because that wasn't something anyone had done yet.

When you've got videos up on Web sites that are literally shot the same day, the whole skate community knows right away when new tricks are invented or new techniques are available.

The biggest lesson I learned from my dad is to support children even if they're doing something that is unorthodox.

If I can stand up when I'm 80, I'll be happy to cruise around on a skateboard. If I feel like my skills are fading, I just won't do it publicly.

When I was around eleven or twelve, my board got hung up on the top of a bowl, and I got a concussion, and I knocked my teeth out. That was the first time that I got seriously injured, and I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and my parents briefly doubted.

You just have to adapt, and you have to realize where people are going to actually play their games. It used to just be Nintendo and PlayStation, and now it's all kind of devices. So you've got to learn to adapt what you know from the technology into those areas... I've been wanting to do a mobile game for a long time.