Aimee Mullins

At some point in every person's life, you will need an assisted medical device - whether it's your glasses, your contacts, or as you age and you have a hip replacement or a knee replacement or a pacemaker. The prosthetic generation is all around us.

Adversity isn't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It's part of our life.

Life is about making your own happiness - and living by your own rules.

I haven't had an easy life, but at some point, you have to take responsibility for yourself and shape who it is that you want to be. I have no time for moaners. I like to chase my dreams and surround myself with other people who are chasing their dreams, too.

I've had journalists asking me, 'What do we call you - is it handicapped, are you disabled, physically challenged?' I said, 'Well hopefully you could just call me Aimee. But if you have to describe it, I'm a bilateral below-the-knee amputee.'

For me, I never ever felt the ownership or any identity with any community of disabilities. I didn't grow up being told that I was a disabled child.

Beauty is not skin-deep; it can be a means of self-affirmation, a true indicator of personality and confidence.

True beauty is when someone radiates that they like themselves.

If you watch any John Hughes film of the eighties, that was my childhood experience.

Belief in oneself is incredibly infectious. It generates momentum, the collective force of which far outweighs any kernel of self-doubt that may creep in.

I think that everyone has something about themselves that they feel is their weakness... their 'disability.' And I'm certain we all have one, because I think of a disability as being anything which undermines our belief and confidence in our own abilities.

I've said this before, but I believe more than ever that confidence is sexier than any body part.