"Always look for opportunities."
“An American in cycling was comparable to a French baseball team in the World Series. I was a gate-crasher in a revered and time-honored sport, and I had no concept of its rules, written and unwritten, or its etiquette. Let's just say that my Texas manners didn't play well on the continent.”
—From “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life”
“Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a ninety-percent chance or a fifty-percent chance or a one-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.”
"Enjoy your life."
"Everybody wants to know what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?"
—From a Nike commercial
“Excuses are like bums: everybody has one and they all stink.”
“I am not the next Greg LeMond; I am the first Lance Armstrong.”
“I become a happier man each time I suffer.”
"I don't have any more bad days. I have good days and I have great days. Cancer no longer consumes my life, my thoughts, or my behavior. If I have a tough week, all I have to do is sit back and reflect on what I went through, and look at my son, and things don't bother me anymore. I'm not only alive, but I'm responsible for another life, the life of my child. When you almost lose your life to cancer, and then win the Tour de France, and then become a father, it grows you up fast. I'm more thoughtful, and I resist saying the first thing that comes out of my mouth. Before, all of my questions were directed toward the ‘me,’ as in ‘Why me?’ or, ‘What are my chances?’ But now I've started looking at other people."
“I don't need to ride for the money, I do it because I love it and I would happily ride for nothing. I will be riding a bike in 10 years time because I feel better when I do exercise and I want to enjoy true good health.”
"I had learned what it means to ride the Tour de France. It's not about the bike...."
—From “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life,” on winning a Tour stage in 1995, two days after the death of his Motorola team-mate, Fabio Casartelli, on a high speed descent
"I haven't thought about losing, I have no fear."
“I think it's important to be understood, to be honest, to be hard working, and ultimately the press, the public, the organizers...they'll decide. But I can only be myself, I can't be the guy that goes out and puts on a show.... I can only be myself.”
“If you ever get a second chance in life for something, you've got to go all the way.”
"It's good to ride with friends."
"It's true that I like to suffer. I know what pain is. Eventually, sacrificing yourself and suffering are what is going to make the difference between he who becomes a genuine champion and he who will never be one."
“La vie est courte, c'est mieux de gagner. [Life is short, it is better to win.]”
"My career is going to be played out year by year. Will I be here in 2004? I don't know. The record won't keep me here. Happiness will."
"No one automatically gives you respect just because you show up. You have to earn it."
—From a Comcast commercial
"People with goals succeed because they know where they are going."
"The answers are usually tougher than the questions."
"The Europeans look down on raising your hands. They don't like the endzone dance. I think that's unfortunate. That feeling—the finish line, the last couple of meters—is what motivates me."
"The truth is, if you ask me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father."
—From “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life”
"There was a second supremely sweet moment of victory. As I made my way through the finish area, I passed the Cofidis team. Assorted members of the organization stood around, the men who I felt had left me for dead in a hospital room. ‘That was for you,’ I said as I moved past them."
—From “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life,” on what he said to the Cofidis team, which signed him just before he was diagnosed with cancer and then dropped him, after winning the opening time trial and becoming the leader of the 1999 Tour de France
"This is not Disneyland, or Hollywood. I'll give you an example: I've read that I flew up the hills and mountains of France. But you don't fly up a hill. You struggle slowly and painfully up a hill, and maybe, if you work very hard, you get to the top ahead of everybody else."
“We have an obligation to be good people. I can be mean; I can yell; and scream; and cuss; and be seemingly a bad person, but at the end of the day, I’m going to do whatever it takes—if I was checking out that night—to prove that I was a good guy. Whether it was giving back to the world of cancer, giving back to the world in general, giving back to my family, giving back to the sport—whether it’s financially, or your time, whether it’s that yellow jersey in the suitcase—if it’s just giving it away, that’s what you’ve got to do.”
—From a 1999 interview with Samuel Abst
"We sped on, across the plains, toward Metz. I hung back, saving myself. It is called the Race of Truth. The early stages separate the strong riders from the weak. Now the weak would be eliminated altogether."
“What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was—in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.”
—From “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life”
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