Kelly Clark Quotes

The foundational skills of snowboarding are what pay off in the long run. That's something I've been able to build over time and that's benefited me a lot. With my age and looking at my career, perhaps I'm more comfortable in my own skin than I've ever been.

These have been the most successful years I've ever had. I've been placing well in the contests but more importantly I've been enjoying them. I think those two things go hand-in-hand.

By the time I was 18 years old, I had achieved everything that was in my heart to do and at the same time I wasn't finding the fulfillment I was expecting to get from it. All of the experiences were incredible and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but it wasn't fulfilling me. I went through the motions for a few more years, but I was looking for something more.

I never planned to be at the height of my career when I was 30 years old and going to my fourth Olympics. I watched the 1998 Olympics when I was 14 years old. That's what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I might have a shot at three Olympics max. This is way beyond the parameters of what I set out to do.

We're not meant to do it on our own. We're meant to do life with God and with each other. I've been fortunate to have friends that are willing to invest in me even on the days when I'm not able to invest back into them. I'm thankful for people that have that selfless attitude and have helped me become a successful person and a successful athlete.

I'm not trying to snowboard for other people anymore. That just kind of comes with age and growing up. That's helped me a lot. Some of that started right after the last Olympics (in Vancouver).

I thought being a Christian was about following rules and going to church and being good all the time, but this girl helped me understand that it's about having a relationship with God. That was where things shifted for me.

I don't look to my situation to determine what choices I make. I've developed a good sense of values and beliefs. That's my reality. No matter where I am, God is still good. No matter where I am, nothing is impossible. It's those sort of principles that really anchor me.

Snowboarding was everything that I knew. That's what I did and I poured everything I had into it. I thought that being successful and achieving my goals would go hand-in-hand with being happy.

People ask a lot about how I can be a believer in a culture that perhaps is counter cultural to what you believe in. I've come to the conclusion that I'm able to be in this culture and in this industry and fruitful because I don't look to my circumstances to determine what I believe to be true about God.

I strongly believe in that saying, "People don't care what you know until they know that you care." That's been my goal and objective - to love people well. That's something I can bring to this community.

I've always lived a life where what you see if what you get. I've never wanted to live two different lifestyles. The initial transition for me was perhaps the most difficult. It wasn't easy communicating what I believed and what my values were. Establishing that as a young adult was interesting. I was 20 years old when I got saved.

It's funny. I competed against a 13-year old girl at the Winter X Games. I looked down at her birth date and it said 2000. I was like, "Huh, I wonder if she even knows what Y2K is?" But I guess I've just been able to build a foundation.

As I've been open with my faith, there's a consistency that almost disarms people. They know what they're going to get when they see me. They know what they're going to get when they talk to me.

When I was 20, I was contemplating quitting. I was at the first event of the season and I overhead a conversation between two girls. One told the other, "God still loves you," and that caught my attention. Later that day, I caught up with the girl and asked her what she meant. Before then, I'd never really thought about God. But there was an undeniable stirring in me and I couldn't ignore it.

2006 Games -by then, my identity had started to shift. Before that, my identity was in snowboarding. That's how people knew me and that's how I knew myself. That's where I got a lot of my self worth. That began to shift and I started to understand that I didn't get my worth from people or from the things that I did. It was from Christ. If I hadn't had that shift in my life, I think my world would have come crumbling down.

You can't let your current circumstances dictate what kind of choices you make.

Yeah, one of my approaches with my community, my friends, the companies I represent, has been to take the attitude of what I bring instead of what I can get. What can I give?