Carrie Soto Is Back Quotes

We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men.

Some men's childhoods are permitted to last forever, but women are so often reminded that there is work to be done.

Falling in love is really quite simple,” she says. “You want to know the secret? It’s the same thing we are all doing about life every single day.” I look to her. “Forget there’s an ending.

My heart hurts when you hurt because you are my heart.

One of the great injustices of this rigged world we live in is that women are considered to be depleting with age and men are somehow deepening.

Why do I have to be nice when most of the men aren’t?

People act like you can never forget your own name, but if you’re not paying attention, you can veer so incredibly far away from everything you know about yourself to the point where you stop recognizing what they call you.

Luckily, I did not need to be pretty. My body was built to wage war.

They can’t make us go away just because they are done with us

My older self knows that you must stop—in the middle of the chaos—to take in the world around you. To breathe in deeply, smell the sunscreen and the rubber of the ball, let the breeze blow across your neck, feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. In this respect, I love the way the world has aged me.

Maybe it’s a lie that you have to keep doing what you have always done. That you have to be able to draw a straight line from how you acted yesterday to how you’ll act tomorrow. You don’t have to be consistent. You can change. Just because you want to.

I have always known there is no mountain you cannot climb, one step at a time

Grief is like a deep, dark hole. It calls like a siren: Come to me, lose yourself here. And you fight it and you fight it and you fight it, but when you finally do succumb and jump down into it, you can’t quite believe how deep it is. It feels as if this is how you will live for the rest of your life, falling. Terrified and devastated, until you yourself die. But that is the mirage. That is grief’s dizzying spell. The fall isn’t never-ending. It does have a ground floor. Today, I cry for so long that I finally feel the floor under my feet. I find the bottom. And while I know the hole will be there forever, at least for now, I feel as if I can live inside it. I have learned its boundaries and its edges.

When did I lose that? The delight of success? When did winning become something I needed in order to survive? Something I did not enjoy having, so much as panic without?

I am afraid of losing. I am afraid of how it will look to the world. I’m afraid of this match being the last match my father ever sees me play. I am afraid of ending this all on a loss. I am afraid of so much.

I am no longer the greatest tennis player in the world. For the first time in my life, I can be...something else.

I'm so grateful now, for every match and every win and every loss and every lesson that I have behind me. It feels so good, right now, to be thirty seven years old. To have figured at least some things out.

I suspected the problem was that I was always the winner. But I could not for the life of me understand why that made people want to play with me less instead of more.

You are perfect, even in your imperfection.

This is the tiniest beginning of a terrible, beautiful whole new life.

No matter how good I was on the court, I was never good enough for the public. It wasn’t enough to play nearly perfect tennis. I had to do that and also be charming. And that charm had to appear effortless.

Good is the enemy of great,

My ambition has long felt oppressive. It is not a joy—it is a master that I must answer to, a smoke that descends into my life, making it hard to breathe. It is only my discipline, my willingness to push myself harder, that has been my way through.

Mick Riva’s kid?” my dad said. “I cannot stand that guy.

For decades, my talent and drive were utterly devastating to those who stood in my wake. If each person is blessed with an induvial gift, determination is mine.

Because you are not yet who you will one day be.

The downside of perfectionism is that you are so used to getting it right, you completely collapse when you get it wrong.

It is her right to have fun, to keep playing. To not help with dinner.

I keep thinking, I don’t cry on the court. I don’t cry on the court. But then I think, Maybe it’s a lie that you have to keep doing what you have always done. That you have to be able to draw a straight line from how you acted yesterday to how you’ll act tomorrow. You don’t have to be consistent. You can change, I think. Just because you want to. And so, for the first time in decades, I stand in front of a roaring crowd and cry.

It was okay to win as long as I acted surprised when I did and attributed it to luck. I should never let on how much I wanted to win or, worse, that I believed I deserved to win. And I should never, under any circumstances, admit that I did not believe all of my opponents were just as worthy as I was. The bulk of the commentators... they wanted a woman whose eyes would tear up with gratitude, as if she owed them her victory, as if she owed them everything she had.

Falling in love is really quite simple,” she says. “You want to know the secret? It’s the same thing we are all doing about life every single day.” I look to her. “Forget there’s an ending.

The book I brought is an unauthorized biography of Daisy Jones and the Six. I’m only reading to see who slept with who, but I can’t focus.

I did not pick up a racket to grow tense and weary and afraid of failing. I picked it up to feel the joy of smashing a ball as hard as I can. I picked it up to spend time with my dad.

You left!” he says, his voice rising. And then he shakes his head and laughs to himself. “You hurt your knee, you lost a couple matches, and you gave up. That’s what you did. You’re saying we’re the same, but we’re not. I stuck around. I had the guts to try. I have the guts to lose. You, you just run. Well, guess what, Carrie? People who are actually playing the game lose. We all lose. We lose all the time. That is life. So we are not the same, Soto. I have courage. You’re just good at tennis.

You are completely insufferable, and I can't stop thinking about you.

What a gift it is, to be able to guide someone to a point and then let them finish it themself. To give someone all the knowledge you have and then pray they use it right.

What I actually remember most about her is the emptiness she left behind. There was this sense, within the house, that there used to be someone else here. But now it was just my father and me.

If I say your hair is purple, does that mean it’s purple?” he asked. “No, it’s brown.” “Does it mean you have to prove to me it’s brown?” I shook my head. “No, you can see it is.” “You are going to be one of the greatest tennis players in the world someday, cariño. That is as true as your brown hair. You don’t need to show them. You just need to be.

My older self knows that you must stop—in the middle of the chaos—to take in the world around you.

They can't make us go away just because they are done with us.

But not thicker women, like me. Or dark-skinned women like Carla Perez or Suze Carter. Not women who are British Chinese, like Nicki, or downright scary in their intensity like her either. Not the women who aren’t skinny and white and smiling. And yet, no matter what type of woman you are, we all still have one thing in common: Once we are deemed too old, it doesn’t matter who we used to be.

And like we talked about, everyone will be looking at you, looking to see if you’re as good as they’ve heard. Ignore all that. Just be good––don’t try to prove it.

We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men

Do not let what anyone says about you determine how you feel about yourself

He believed in the beauty and simplicity of doing something the way it has always been done but better than anyone else has ever done it.

One man's bitch is another woman's hero.

Every match you play, you are one match closer to becoming the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen. You were not born that person. You were born to become that person.

Bowe looks at me and closes his eyes slowly. He takes a breath. “You act like you’ve dedicated your life to tennis. But you came back to win, not to play. That’s why they’re all pissed at you for returning. You’ve got no heart.

Grief is like a deep, dark hole. It calls like a siren: Come to me, lose yourself here. And you fight it and you fight it and you fight it, but when you finally do succumb and jump down into it, you can't quite believe how deep it is. It feels as if this is how you will live for the rest of your life, falling. Terrified and devastated, until you yourself die.

You have to find a way to be right with who you actually are, to face what life is really like.

Honor is . . . sometimes just a nice word for ego.

Go out there…” He looks me directly in the eye with an intensity I have not seen in years, maybe even since I was a kid. “And show them that the Bitch, the Battle Axe—whatever they want to call you—it doesn’t matter. They cannot stop you. And they don’t get to decide what your name is. Carrie Soto is back.

Gwen smiles. “Do you know what part of ‘If—’ is actually relevant right now? To this moment? ‘If you can make one heap of all your winnings / And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, / And lose, and start again at your beginnings / And never breathe a word about your loss.’ ” She must be messing with me. Surely she knows she’s just described my greatest fear. But no, I can tell from the look on her face that she sincerely thinks that I’m that brave, that I am doing this because I am okay with losing big. Not because I am terrified of losing at all. And it stuns me silent, for a moment: just how vast the gap is between who I am and how people see me.

What would he say if he were here? What would he have written in this book if he'd had more time? There are still things I need to know; there is still advice I need to get from him. There is more to do together.

Try to enjoy it, pichona," my father says. "That's the one thing you have forgotten.

Just smile and nod,” Gwen says. “How hard is that?” “Very,” I say. “I hate half these people. I hate half of all people

And yet, we cannot deny that the tide has turned. Carrie Soto is the past. Nicki Chan is the future. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.

Cariño, put it out of your mind. It is too heavy of a weight for you to bear.

I wondered why anyone would want to build anything out of sand when tomorrow it will be gone, and you’d have nothing to show for your day.

You are not competing with her. You are competing with yourself.

Maybe it’s a lie that you have to keep doing what you have always done. That you have to be able to draw a straight line from how you acted yesterday to how you’ll act tomorrow. You don’t have to be consistent. You can change,

Sometimes I think you don’t understand the heartache I feel when I see you lose,” he says, catching my eye and not letting go. “Knowing how badly you want it, knowing how much your soul needs it. Sometimes I think it is enough to break me.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel a hum in my bones that I have not felt in years. It is startling, the buzz of unexpected joy.

Instead, I take the moment and pin it to my heart, as if it will wait for me to come back to it later.

Some men’s childhoods are permitted to last forever, but women are so often reminded that there is work to be done.

Just smile and nod,” Gwen says. “How hard is that?” “Very,” I say

My dad and I. Always together. Our little team of two. Proud coach and star student.

But I cannot hear anything as clearly as the sound of my own voice, begging me: Let this be enough.

I can’t decide if I think Bowe is a good influence, standing up against an umpire biased for the opposition, or a terrible influence, a grown man throwing a temper tantrum when things don’t go his way. But of course there are no absolute morals or lessons. Only perspectives. One man’s bitch is another woman’s hero.

I am so grateful, right now, for every match and every win and every loss and every lesson that I have behind me. It feels so good, right now, to be thirty-seven years old. To have figured at least some things out. To know the ground underneath my feet.

You know what my heart is—no, my soul? It’s like an old mattress that’s been bounced on so many times that now, if you put your hand on it, it leaves a permanent imprint. That’s what my soul is now. Just a big old mattress showing every dent.

Nina continued staring at Carrie but didn’t say anything. How was it that this woman could shout out every thought running through her head? Why was it that Carrie Soto felt so entitled to scream? In that moment, Nina was not mad or jealous or embarrassed or anything else she might have expected. Nina was sad. Sad that she’d never lived a fraction of a second like Carrie Soto. What a world she must live in, Nina thought, where you can piss and moan and stomp your feet and cry in public and yell at the people who hurt you. That you can dictate what you will and will not accept. Nina, her entire life, had been programmed to accept. Accept that your father left. Accept that your mother is gone. Accept that you must take care of your siblings. Accept that the world wants to lust after you. Accept accept accept. For so long, Nina believed it was her greatest strength - that she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable. Nina thought of herself driving to someone else’s house to scream on their front lawn while a whole party’s worth of people watched. It was so impossible that she couldn’t even summon a mental picture. But Carrie had this fire within her. Where was Nina’s fire? Had it ever been there? And if so, when did it go out? Her husband had slept with Carrie last night and then Nina had taken him back this evening. What was wrong with her? Was she just going to accept it all? Just accept every piece of bullshit thrown at her for the rest of her life?

Some men's childhoods are permitted to last forever, but women are so often reminded that there is work to be done. And yet here is Carrie Soto, daring to play.

I have always known there is no mountain you cannot climb, one step at a time.

If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two impostors just the same

Why are people like this? Honestly. Let’s all just walk by each other all day and not stop to small-talk.

My God, how hard it must have been for my father to do this. To sit here, a ball of nerves, knowing that all of the control was in my hands. He could not think for me on the court, he could not hit the ball for me. He just had to have faith that I could play the way he’d taught me. What a gift it is, to be able to guide someone to a point and then let them finish it themself. To give someone all the knowledge you have and then pray they use it right. It’s a skill I am learning, one I am determined to perfect.

Here you go, Jav,” he says. “Jav?” I say. “You’re on a nickname basis now?” “Of course we are,” my dad says. Though he’s joking around, he seems tired. “Thanks, B.” “Bowe is already short for Bowen,” I say. “You don’t need to shorten it again.” My dad waves me off. “Mind your own business, Care.” Bowe laughs, and I throw up my hands.

Bowe leans forward on the table and moves his drink out of the way. “This guy, the Inner Game of Tennis guy, he talks about two selves. Self 1 and Self 2. Self 1 says, ‘C’mon, Huntley! Get it together!’ Self 2 is the Huntley who’s supposed to be doing the getting it together.” I say, “I get you so far.” “Self 2 is doing all the work, right? Self 2 is going to win you the game. Self 2 is the hero. Self 1 just yells and gets frustrated and gets in the way.

What a gift it is, to be able to guide someone to a point and then let them finish it themself. To give someone all the knowledge you have and then pray they use it right. It’s a skill I am learning, one I am determined to perfect.

I’m not a child anymore. Sometimes I’m going to have an opinion. Sometimes, when I’m ten miles and fifty laps in, I’m going to complain. But I’ll do what you say, and you deal with my attitude, and maybe one day soon, we’ll win another Slam title, ¿Está bien?” He looks at me, emotionless for a moment. And then he smiles and holds out his hand. “Perfecto.

Grief is like a deep, dark hole. It calls like a siren. Come to me, lose yourself here. And you fight it and you fight it and you fight it, but when you finally do succub and jump down into it, you can't quite believe how deep it is. It feels as if this is how you will live for the rest of your life, falling. Terrified and devastate, until you yourself die. But that is the mirage. That is grief's dizzying spell. The fall isn't never-ending. It does have a ground floor.

Other women in tennis—blond women with big boobs and long legs—often get modeling contracts at age seventeen. They show up on the cover of men’s magazines within a year or so of hitting the court for the first time. But not thicker women, like me. Or dark-skinned women like Carla Perez or Suze Carter. Not women who are British Chinese, like Nicki, or downright scary in their intensity like her either. Not the women who aren’t skinny and white and smiling. And yet, no matter what type of woman you are, we all still have one thing in common: Once we are deemed too old, it doesn’t matter who we used to be.

Bowe shakes his head. “You’re not, Soto. I know you can’t see it—because you’re one of those annoying kids in school who thinks getting ninety-nine on the test only means you didn’t get one hundred.” “It does mean that.” “Yeah, and there you go, ruining the curve for everybody else.” “And everyone hates me.” “I wish you could see it from the outside.” “See what?” Bowe looks me in the eye and is quiet for a moment. And then he says, “Eres perfecta, incluso en tu imperfección.” I sit up, unsure I heard him right. But of course I did. His accent is terrible, but it has knocked the wind out of me just the same.

Every time you get out on that court, you must play a better tennis game than you played the time before. Did you play your best game of tennis today?” “No,” I said. “Next time, I want you to beat yourself. Every day you must beat the day before.

My father wore drugstore cologne. But right now, in this moment, I love this drugstore cologne more than I love the smell of Wimbledon grass or California oranges or the rubber of a freshly popped can of tennis balls. This drugstore cologne is my home.

I take the paper and open it. There are three Spanish phrases, all written out in his messy handwriting. You are perfect, even in your imperfection. You are completely insufferable, and I can’t stop thinking about you. I want the real thing this time. “You wrote these down? So you could say them to me?” “Yes.” “If I kiss you, will it hurt?” I ask, moving closer to him. “What?” “Your ribs. If I kiss you, will I hurt you?” “No,” he says. “I don’t think so.” I put both of my hands on his face and kiss him. He reaches his good arm across my lower back and pulls me toward him. I’ve kissed him before, years ago. But this feels both familiar and brand-new, like a good stretch, like a deep breath. “I don’t know what this is,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s the real thing or not.” “I don’t care,” he says, kissing me again. He grabs at the hem of my T-shirt and the buttons on my jeans. “I don’t want to hurt you.” “I don’t care about that either,” he says, kissing me again. “You have to be careful,” I say. “Of your ribs.” “Carrie, please,” he says, kissing my neck. “Stop worrying.” And so I do.

You could not pay me enough money to go back to being seventeen. When I was seventeen, my talent was all potential and no proof. The world was a giant set of unknowns, barely any past to pull from. I am so grateful, right now, for every match and every win and every loss and every lesson that I have behind me. It feels so good, right now, to be thirty-seven years old. To have figured at least some things out. To know the ground underneath my feet.

My father had hired me a hitter named Elena to help me work on my returns. Elena was almost twenty and had an incredible serve. I often wondered, as we played together, why she didn’t hone the rest of her game to try to play professionally. But she seemed entirely uninterested. A fact that I was exceedingly unnerved by.

Because you are not yet who you will one day be.” I looked up at him, my guarded heart opening ever so slightly. “Every match you play, you are one match closer to becoming the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen. You were not born that person. You were born to become that person. And that is why you must best yourself every time you get on the court. Not so that you beat the other person—” “But so that I become more myself,” I finished. “Now you’re getting it,” my father said. “You played the best tennis you’ve ever played in your life.” “And you’re happy,” I said. “With me. Because I played great.” “Because you played the best you ever have.” “And every day I will play better and better,” I said. “Until one day, I am the greatest.” “Until you’ve reached the fullest of your potential. That’s the most important thing. We don’t stop for one second until you are the best you can be,” he said. “We don’t rest. Until it’s finally true. Algún día.” “Because then I will be who I was born to be.

This will be the last tournament that I will ever play. And I can't help but enjoy it. I did not pick up a racket to grow tense and weary and afraid of failing. I picked it up to feel the joy of smashing a ball as hard as I can. I picked it up to spend time with my dad. This is it. My last moment of what he and I started together. This match. This tiebreaker. I could live in it forever.

I do know what I want," he says. "I'm here, aren't I? You fucking rejected me back in '82 and took up with Randall, of all people. You rejected me back in Melbourne. You all but rejected me back in Paris. And still, I'm here, every night, any second that you want me. I know exactly what I want Carrie. I've made it clear." I watch him throw his head back on the bed. And I let myself believe for a moment that maybe he means it. Maybe this time, maybe this man, means it. "Just forget it," he says. And then he turns his back on me and fluffs his pillow angrily. And I smile to myself because you don't fluff a pillow you're not planning to sleep on.

My father waved her away. “She’s destined,” he said. “It is plain as day. With your grace and my strength, she can be the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen. They will tell stories about her one day.” My mother rolled her eyes at him as she began to put dinner on the table. “I would rather she was kind and happy.” “Alicia,” my father said as he stood behind my mother and wrapped his arms around her. “No one ever tells stories about that.

Gwen smiles. “Do you know what part of ‘If—’ is actually relevant right now? To this moment? ‘If you can make one heap of all your winnings / And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, / And lose, and start again at your beginnings / And never breathe a word about your loss.’ ” She must be messing with me. Surely she knows she’s just described my greatest fear. But no, I can tell from the look on her face that she sincerely thinks that I’m that brave, that I am doing this because I am okay with losing big. Not because I am terrified of losing at all. And it stuns me silent, for a moment: just how vast the gap is between who I am and how people see me. I am so much smaller than the Carrie Soto in Gwen’s head.

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. When I opened them, I couldn’t look at my father. I looked out the window and watched as, across the street, a woman came out of her house and got her mail. I wondered if she was having a terrible day too. Or maybe her life looked nothing like mine. Maybe she lived free from all this pressure, this sense that she lived or died by how good she was at something. Was she burdened by the need to win everything she did? Or did she live for nothing?

Grief is like a deep, dark hole. It calls like a siren: Come to me, lose yourself here. And you fight it and you fight it and you fight it, but when you finally do succumb and jump down into it, you can’t quite believe how deep it is. It feels as if this is how you will live for the rest of your life, falling. Terrified and devastated, until you yourself die. But that is the mirage. That is grief’s dizzying spell. The fall isn’t never-ending. It does have a ground floor. Today, I cry for so long that I finally feel the floor under my feet. I find the bottom.

Nicki keeps her eyes focused entirely on watching the trainer wrap her foot. But her next words are aimed squarely at me. “I don’t think you’ve ever understood what I can do. What I am doing.” “I do,” I say. “I see it.” “I am better than you,” she says. “Give me a break, Nicki.” “You think that if this was 1982, I wouldn’t stand a chance against you,” Nicki continues. “I know that if this was 1982, you wouldn’t stand a chance against me,” I say. “Because it’s 1995, and you don’t stand a chance against me.” Nicki scoffs. “You just can’t see it.” “How good you are?” I say. “I see how good you are.” “You don’t respect what I’ve done for tennis the way I respect what you’ve done.” “What have you done that I haven’t done?” Nicki turns and looks at me. Her gaze is heavy. “I’m the first Asian woman to ever win Wimbledon. The first woman like me to do almost any of the things I’ve done in tennis—hitting these records. Because we both know tennis doesn’t make it easy for those of us who aren’t blond and blue-eyed.” “Yes,” I say, nodding. “Absolutely.

There is a guard standing behind me. And then I hear footsteps. “Nicki,” I say. She’s wearing a white shirt and a navy blue skirt. Her Nike 130s are white with a blue Swoosh. “Carrie.” “You feeling all right?” I say. “How’s your ankle? How’s your back? Any injuries I should exploit?” Nicki laughs. “Unfortunately for you, I’m feeling one hundred percent.” “Good,” I say. “The win will be sweeter.” Nicki shakes her head. “I read an interview with you years ago, when I was still a kid,” she says. “Where you said your father called you ‘Achilles.’ ” “Yeah,” I say. “The greatest of the Greeks.” “I was always jealous of that. That sense of destiny you seemed to have. Do you remember what Achilles said to Hector after Hector killed Patroclus?” It has been a long time since I’ve actually read The Iliad. I shake my head. She smiles. “He says, ‘There can be no pacts between men and lions. I will make you pay in full for the grief you have caused me.’ 

You’re not playing your opponent, you understand that, yes?” I stared at him, unsure. But I needed him to believe that I understood everything I was supposed to be—it seemed like an unbearable betrayal of our mission for me to be confused about any of it. “Every time you get out on that court, you must play a better tennis game than you played the time before. Did you play your best game of tennis today?” “No,” I said. “Next time, I want you to beat yourself. Every day you must beat the day before.” I sat down on the bench next to me and considered. What my father was proposing was a much, much harder endeavor. But once the thought had been put in my head, I had to rise to it. I could not expel it. “Entiendo,” I said. “Now go get your things. We are driving to the beach.” “No, Dad,” I said. “Please, no. Can’t we just go home? Or what if we went out for ice cream? This girl in my class said there is a place that has great ice cream sandwiches. I thought we could go.” He laughed. “We are not going to condition your legs sitting around eating ice cream sandwiches. We can only do that by…” I frowned.

I think I have done you a disservice,” my father finally said, looking me in the eye. “I told you from such a young age that you could be the very best. But I never explained to you that it’s about aiming for excellence, not about stats.” “What?” “I am just saying that when you were a child, I spoke in…grandiosities. But, Carrie, there is no actual unequivocal greatest in the world. Tennis doesn’t work like that. The world doesn’t work like that.” “I’m not going to sit here and be insulted.” “How am I insulting you? I am telling you there is no one way to define the greatest of all time. You’re focusing right now on rankings. But what about the person who gets the most titles over the span of their career? Are they the greatest? How about the person with the fastest recorded serve? Or the highest paid? I’m asking you to take a minute and recalibrate your expectations.” “Excuse me?” I said, standing up. “Recalibrate my expectations?” “Carrie,” my father said. “Please listen to me.” “No,” I said, putting my hands up. “Don’t use your calm voice and act like you’re being nice. Because you’re not. Having someone on this planet who is as good as me—or better—means I have not achieved my goal. If you would like to coach someone who is fine being second, go coach someone else.” I threw my napkin down and walked out of the restaurant. I made my way through the lobby to the parking lot. I was still furious by the time my father caught up to me by my car. “Carolina, stop, you’re making a scene,” he said. “Do you have any idea how hard it is?” I shouted. It felt shocking to me, to hear my own voice that loud. “To give everything you have to something and still not be able to grasp it! To fail to reach the top day after day and be expected to do it with a smile on your face? Maybe I’m not allowed to make a scene on the court, but I will make a scene here, Dad. It is the very least you can give me. Just for once in my life, let me scream about something!” There were people gathering in the parking lot, and each one of them, I could tell, knew my name. Knew my father’s name. Knew exactly what they were witnessing. “WHAT ARE YOU ALL LOOKING AT? GO ON ABOUT YOUR SAD LITTLE DAYS!” I got in my convertible and drove away. —