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There Were No Shortcuts, I Realized. It Took Years Of Racing To Build Up The Mind And Body And Character Until A Rider Had Logged Hundreds Of Races And Thousands Of Miles Of Road. I Wouldn't Be Able To Win A Tour De France Until I Had Enough Iron In My Legs, And Lungs, And Brain And Heart.

-Lance Armstrong

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There Were No Shortcuts,

Lance Armstrong

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There Were No Shortcuts, I Realized. It Took Years Of Racing To Build Up The Mind And Body And Character Until A Rider Had Logged Hundreds Of Races And Thousands Of Miles Of Road. I Wouldn't Be Able To Win A Tour De France Until I Had Enough Iron In My Legs, And Lungs, And Brain And Heart.

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I Believed In Belief, For Its Own Shining Sake. To Believe In The Face Of Utter Hopelessness, Every Article Of Evidence To The Contrary, To Ignore Apparent Catastrophe - What Other Choice Was There? We Do It Every Day, I Realized. We Are So Much Stronger Than We Imagine, And Belief Is One Of The Most Valiant And Long-lived Human Characteristics. To Believe, When All Along We Humans Know That Nothing Can Cure The Briefness Of This Life, That There Is No Remedy For Our Basic Mortality, That Is A Form Of Bravery. To Continue Believing In Yourself, Believing In The Doctors, Believing In Thetreatent, Believing In Whatever I Chose To Believe In, That Was The Most Important Thing.

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[a 2005 Response To Doping Allegations] Unfortunately, The Witch Hunt Continues And Tomorrow's Article Is Nothing Short Of Tabloid Journalism. The Paper Even Admits In Its Own Article That The Science In Question Here Is Faulty And That I Have No Way To Defend Myself. They State: 'there Will Therefore Be No Counter-exam Nor Regulatory Prosecutions, In A Strict Sense, Since Defendant's Rights Cannot Be Respected.' I Will Simply Restate What I Have Said Many Times: I Have Never Taken Performance Enhancing Drugs.

Me And Running Don’t Always See Eye To Eye. Some Days It Hurts More Than Others. But It Doesn’t Mean I Don’t Do It. I Deal With It And I Keep Running Because Not Everything That Is Good For You, Always Feels Good For You.

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Extraordinary Allegations Require Extraordinary Evidence.

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If Life Gives You Lemons, Drink The Juice In Order To Mask The Presence Of Performing-enhancing Drugs.

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Life To Me Is A Series Of False Limits And My Challenge As An Athlete Is To Explore Those Limits

It Gave Me A Chance To Re-evaluate My Life And My Career. Cancer Certainly Gives Things A New Perspective. I Would Not Have Won The Tour De France If I Had Not Had Cancer. It Gave Me New Strength And Focus.

I Still Don't Get Golf.

The Idea That Anybody Was Forced, Or Pressured, Or Encouraged, Is Not True.

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I May Be In Timeout Forever. But I Hope Not To Be.

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I Tried To Control The Narrative.

Made Plenty Of Mistakes Along The Way - All Of Which I Am Truly Sorry.

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I Know What Happened To My Foundation, From Raising No Money To Raising $500m, Serving Three Million People. Do We Want To Take That Away? I Don't Think Anybody Says Yes.

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My Greatest Point Is My Persistence... However Down I Am, I Fight Until The Last Ball.

Winning Is About Heart, Not Just Legs. It's Got To Be In The Right Place.

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It Works Better For Me To Be Nervous And Hungry.

The Question Was, Which Would The Chemo Kill First: The Cancer Or Me?

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What Is Stronger, Fear Or Hope?

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I'm Cycling To Take Cancer Message Worldwide.

If We Don't Somehow Stem The Tide Of Childhood Obesity, We're Going To Have A Huge Problem.

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Lifestyle Choices

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There Was More Happiness In The Process, In The Build, In The Preparation. The Winning Was Almost Phoned In.

I Would Love To Be In A Place, And I May Never Get There, Where I Can Help People. It's Something That I Never Really Cared To Advertise. It Got Advertised. I Still Do It On One-on-one Level Almost Daily.

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The Last Thing I'll Say For The People That Don't Believe In Cycling, The Cynics And The Sceptics, I'm Sorry For You. I'm Sorry You Can't Dream Big And I'm Sorry You Don't Believe In Miracles.

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One Of The Redeeming Things About Being An Athlete Is Redefining What Is Humanly Possible.

It's Frustrating In The Sense That I Still Think I Could Be Competing At Some Sport At A Fairly High Level, Which Nobody Cares About. Nobody Wants To Hear Me Say That.

I Wanted To Live, But Whether I Would Or Not Was Mystery, And In The Midst Of Confronting That Fact, Even At That Moment, I Was Beginning To Sense That To Stare Into The Heart Of Such A Fearful Mystery Wasn't A Bad Thing. To Be Afraid Is A Priceless Education. P 99

At This Point Of My Life, I'm Not Out To Protect Anybody. I'm Out To Protect Seven People, And They All Have The Last Name Armstrong.

Anything Is Possible, But You Have To Believe And You Have To Fight.

The Ban Doesn't Have Anything To Do With Livestrong Or My Ability To Work In [the Cancer] Community. Perhaps It Speeds It Up. I Don't Know The Examples In Great Britain Of Athletes Who Have Fallen. I Know The Examples In The United States - The Tiger Woods, The Michael Vicks, Even The Bill Clintons - People Who Are Still Out There Able To Work.

I Can Get Up In The Morning And Look Myself In The Mirror And My Family Can Look At Me Too And That's All That Matters.

I Exercise Everyday. I Swim, I Bike, I Run And I Go To The Gym.

Pain Is Only Temporary. Quitting Is Forever!

The Tour (de France) Is Essentially A Math Problem, A 2,000-mile Race Over Three Weeks That's Sometimes Won By A Margin Of A Minute Or Less. How Do You Propel Yourself Through Space On A Bicycle, Sometimes Steeply Uphill, At A Speed Sustainable For Three Weeks? Every Second Counts.

I Figure The Faster I Pedal, The Faster I Can Retire.

If I Can't Face My Accusers, That's A Joke. We Did That In Medieval Times.

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.

I Am Just Coming Into My Best Years. This Year I Did New Things; Stretching And Abdominal Work.

Cycling Is A Sport Of The Open Road And Spectators Are Lining That Road.

If You Worried About Falling Off The Bike, You'd Never Get On.

The Body Is Telling The Mind To Stop. The Mind Is Telling The Body To Shut Up.

Anyone Who Imagines They Can Work Alone Winds Up Surrounded By Nothing But Rivals, Without Companions. The Fact Is, No One Ascends Alone.

Regardless Of One Victory, Two Victories, Four Victories, There's Never Been A Victory By A Cancer Survivor. That's A Fact That Hopefully I'll Be Remembered For.

I Want To Finish By Saying That I Intend To Be An Avid Spokesperson For Testicular Cancer Once I Have Beaten The Disease. I Want This To Be A Positive Experience And I Want To Take This Opportunity To Help Others Who Might Someday Suffer From The Same Circumstance I Face Today.

My Actions And Reactions, And The Way I Treated Certain Scenarios, Were Way Out Of Line, So I Deserved Some Punishment.

We Each Cope Differently With The Specter Of Our Deaths. Some People Deny It. Some Pray. Some Numb Themselves With Tequila. I Was Tempted To Do A Little Of Each Of Those Things. But I Think We Are Supposed To Try To Face It Straightforwardly, Armed With Nothing But Courage.

The Riskiest Thing You Can Do Is Get Greedy.

At Least I Didn't Invent A Dead Girlfriend

What Makes A Great Endurance Athlete Is The Ability To Absorb Potenial 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.

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.

But, Listen, Eddie Merkyx Would Have Won Six Tours If He Hadn't Been Punched.

Your Past Forms You, Whether You Like It Or Not. Each Encounter And Experience Has Its Own Effect, And You're Shaped The Way The Wind Shapes A Mesquite Tree On A Plain.

It's Simple. Success Comes From Training Harder, Living Better And Digging Deeper Than The Others.

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It Can't Be Any Simpler: The Farewell Is Going To Be On The Champs-elysees.

I Take Nothing For Granted. I Now Have Only Good Days, Or Great Days.

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