I smoke, isn't that terrible?
That was my decision, so I have to be responsible for that. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I don't have a good reason for why I wanted to come back, I don't have a good reason for doing it all.
Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.
I am flawed, deeply flawed. I didn't invent the [doping] culture but I didn't try to stop the culture and that's my mistake, and that's what I have to be sorry for.
Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain…. Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said. ’ ‘I don’t understand the question. ’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.
Knowledge is power, community is strength and positive attitude is everything
I would much prefer to be overseas in a covert capacity working on issues, but that is hypothetical. That is no longer open to me. So if I can use my voice in this manner, and talk about something that I care about, then I feel fortunate.
We have had so many years of prosperity, we have passed through so many difficulties and dangers without the loss of liberty - that we begin to think that we hold it by divine right from heaven itself. . . It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.
I've had small parts in big pictures and big parts in small pictures.
When you are out of favor, so to speak, it's not just the reviewers. It's the editors, the publishers, they don't want you anymore, you're just gone and you've been written out of history as effectively as the old Stalinists would write someone else out, take their photograph out of a book.