Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For most of my life I had operated under a simple schematic of winning and losing, but cancer was teaching me a tolerance for ambiguities.
I don't like being in London too long, because everybody's just looking straight forward, at nobody else. That freaks me out a little bit.
I think any professional athlete who says they stick to a strict diet and weigh their food out every time is either lying or they're sick.
Everything I achieve affects my family as well, and suddenly, my kids' dad became the most famous man in the country for a couple of weeks.
The way I dig in to push myself through mountain climbs is totally psychological. I'm not designed to do that stuff. It's mind over matter.
I'm going to do the Commonwealth Games for no other reason than national pride. It's something special getting to ride for the Isle of Man.
I've always shied away from computers, the Internet and all that. I'm a bit more traditional, really - pick up a newspaper, pick up a phone.
It was what I've always wanted, more than anything: to be an Olympic hero rather than a Tour de France star, something I had from childhood.
There was certainly a dishonesty there that I think is totally regrettable and inexcusable. The ringleading, the bullying: not totally true.
You have got Team Sky leading the way on a professional front. They are quite open and have done everything possible on an anti-doping level.
I said at the start of the race that the Tour is about being good for 21 days, being consistent every day, not having super days and bad days.
I'm 28, and for the next six or seven years my goal is to try to fight for the yellow jersey. If I can win it once I would be chuffed to bits.
When you get second place, you say 'I could have won it here, I could have won it there.' When you win, you never say anything; it's finished.
Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down.
I never think: 'If I crash, I'm going to hurt myself.' I might think: 'If I crash, I'm not going to win.' Everything's about that finish line.
He's dangerous, he's beautiful, and he loves the heat, like me - that's why I had a scorpion tattooed on my leg in 1999 after my fifth jersey.
The 2012 Olympics is a fantastic incentive for everyone to help leave a sporting legacy and show that Britain is truly a great sporting nation.
For any young rider even competing in the San Remo is one of the biggest things - but to win it is beyond emotion. You can't put it into words.
I have a house in a small town in Tuscany where everybody knows and looks out for each other. That's a similar mentality to on the Isle of Man.
I've become more of a climber now - who still keeps that time trial as strong as ever. It gives me such self-belief. I feel a different athlete.
The stronger you are as a unit, the more you can control a race. The strongest cyclist in the world isn't as strong as two guys, let alone nine.
When Im not training day in and day out I love to go out and dance, even though it is potentially in my contract that Im not allowed to do that.
I wanted to put a really good kids' racing bike out there for kids under 14: 10-year-olds, eight-year-olds, right down to balance bikes for kids.
I can train harder and put myself through more punishing efforts now than I used to do, having done the Tour de France, and come off the road now.
It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into.
It's funny, because I have periods where I just kind of go dark. I don't tweet, I don't talk, I don't interview, and then I have times where I do.
You can say that climbers suffer the same as the other riders, but they suffer in a different way. You feel the pain, but you're glad to be there.
When I'm not training day in and day out I love to go out and dance, even though it is potentially in my contract that I'm not allowed to do that.
The descents are quite fun - everybody has a sort of competition and tries to go for it and then you compare top speeds when you get to the bottom.
It is nice to be recognised for actually achieving something in life as opposed to spending seven weeks in a house on TV with a load of other muppets.
We all want to be forgiven. There's a lot of really, really bad people who want to be forgiven but will never be forgiven, and I might be in that camp.
Things change; your priorities change in life. So I'd never think of riding 100 miles on Christmas Day now, because I've got two kids, and it's selfish.
When you are suddenly standing in front of a bunch of journalists being asked what it's like being a British Olympic legend, it's a bit much to take in.
I know I'll never feel that sensation of racing and winning again and that took a while to get used to. The Tour was a race I never thought I could lose.
If you're into the brand and the heritage of the brand, you can always remember where you got your first Fred Perry Shirt, and for me I was nine years old
I just felt that if the team is doing seven hours, I'd want to do eight. I'd always need to do more. I knew that would make me better than everybody else.
I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. I rode when no one else would ride.
That period afterwards, just hating being the winner of the Tour de France, hating cycling, hating the media for asking me questions about Lance Armstrong.
Doing 40-minute track sessions is easy money compared to what we were doing on the Tour. What you used to think was hard now feels like a walk in the park.
The ban is completely out of my hands. And I think in most people's minds, even if it's unrealistic to them, it's one that I left myself with no choice on.
Cycling is unique in that in any other sport I'd be in a different weight category or discipline. What I do is a different sport to what Chris Froome does.
I didn't just jump back on the bike and win. There were a lot of ups and downs, good results and bad results, but this time I didn't let the lows get to me.
I have never doped … I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.
A bike ride. Yes, that's it! A simple bike ride. It's what I love to do and most days I can't believe they pay me to do it. A day is not the same without it.
It was great to fight in training, great to fight in the race, but you don't need to fight in a press conference, or an interview, or a personal interaction.
My first was in 1994 and it's ten years ago already. It's been ten years and I'm still around. I won a stage again, like I did last year and the year before.
Racing is a very selfish, self-centred, self-glorifying thing. My wife's life for 14 years was centered around me. It was all about me. It was all for my ego.
I don't think anybody else from my generation had federal agents standing at their door with a badge and a gun, saying: 'You are going to answer my questions'.
The beautiful thing about cycling is that it is so accessible and that pleased me when I was younger because you felt like you could almost touch the athletes.
A lot of the bikes are carbon wheels now, and you don't have as good a braking surface on a carbon wheel in the wet weather as you do on the old aluminium rims.