Dylan Alcott Quotes

Dylan Alcott

Profession : Tennis Player

Birth : December 4, 1990

I think you can do anything in this life whether you're in a wheelchair or not. I go to festivals, nightclubs, I travel the world, I'm loving my work on Triple J.

Dylan Alcott

That's why I love the Paralympics. For two weeks, it's the big show.

Dylan Alcott

I've got, legit, three to four hundred pairs of shoes. And I don't walk, which is funny.

Dylan Alcott

I got bullied because of my disability, I used to get called a cripple or a spastic everywhere I went.

Dylan Alcott

Sport has really given me that platform and I love it, but now that I've got that I want to do it for everyone else with a disability.

Dylan Alcott

It's interesting, I don't really think too much about being a role model or leaving a legacy or whatever. It's just not how I think.

Dylan Alcott

One thing I struggled with the most was my brother started playing football, AFL and I remember I went down and wanted to get involved and I had to sit there and watch. And the club that he was at didn't really have any way to integrate anybody with a disability, and I found that really hard.

Dylan Alcott

My main purpose is to try in some way to change perceptions and stigma so that people with disabilities can get out and live the life they deserve to live. That's what gets me out of bed every day.

Dylan Alcott

It's been the most important thing to me, is to be a good person first, tennis comes second.

Dylan Alcott

People say, 'why not have the Paralympics and Olympics combined?' I'm like, 'When Usain Bolt was running, I fully appreciate everyone will watch him and not me. But guess what? When I'm on, we're the stars, right?'

Dylan Alcott

I'm just a guy who's just always himself, I always try to just be me. I don't try too hard to be a role model or anything, I'm just always myself.

Dylan Alcott

As a kid with disability, if you told me anybody in a wheelchair, let alone myself, would be Australian of the Year later, I would tell you to get stuffed.

Dylan Alcott

I love the Australian Open, but the mecca of tennis is Wimbledon. The Royals are there, everyone's in white. It's just so cool, you can smell the roses when you're on the court.

Dylan Alcott

I questioned whether anyone would love me because I'm in a wheelchair.

Dylan Alcott

I don't get out of bed every day to play to win a tennis tournament, I honestly don't. I do it because I love it, but it also provides me with a platform to do what I really want: which is to continue to change the perceptions around disability.

Dylan Alcott

I was born with my disability and my early teenage years I actually hated having a disability. It was really tough for me.

Dylan Alcott

For people like me with a disability, the unconscious bias is a lack of expectation of what you can do, negative perception, and negative stigmas around having a disability that you are broken, less capable, un-dateable, and most importantly unemployable, and that you can't do it as well as an able-bodied person.

Dylan Alcott

People used to stare at me when I was growing up because I was in a wheelchair, and I hated it. Now they're staring at me because they know me. How amazing is that? It's 'Oh, that's Dylan!' Not, 'Oh, there's a guy in a wheelchair.'

Dylan Alcott

When I started being authentically me, everything started to change. Everyone thinks we've got to be someone we're not, but we don't.

Dylan Alcott

Luckily I just know how to string two words together.

Dylan Alcott