Quotes from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“My mother told me...if you're going to get anywhere, you're going to have to do it yourself, because no one is going to do it for you.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“What is stronger, fear or hope?”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“During our lives...we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“Hope that is the only antidote to fear.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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 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 whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“The question that lingers is, how much was I a factor in my own survival, and how much was science, and how much miracle?
I don't have the answer to that question. Other people look to me for the answer, I know. But if I could answer it, we would have the cure for cancer, and what's more, we would fathom the true meaning of our existences. I can deliver motivation, inspiration, hope, courage, and counsel, but I can't answer the unknowable. Personally, I don't need to try. I 'm content with simply being alive to enjoy the mystery.
Good Joke:
A man is caught in a flood, and as the water rises he climbs to the roof of his house and waits to be rescued. A guy in a motorboat comes by, and he says, "Hop in, I'll save you."
"No thanks," the man on the rooftop says. "My Lord will save me."
But the floodwaters keep rising. A few minutes later, a rescue plane flies overhead and the pilot drops a line.
"No, thanks," the man on the rooftop says. "My Lord will save me."
But the floodwaters rise ever higher, and finally, they overflow the roof and the man drowns.
When he gets to heaven, he confronts God.
"My Lord, why didn't you save me?" he implores.
"You idiot," God says. "I sent a boat, I sent you a plane."
I think in a way we are all just like the guy on the rooftop. Things take place, there is a confluence of events and circumstances, and we can't always know their purpose, or even if there is one. But we can take responsibility for ourselves and be brave.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“Evan Handler is a man who’s looked into the abyss and laughed. His book, It’s Only Temporary, made me laugh along with him. He covers love, lust, showbiz, triumph, and despair – and he manages to be both funny and inspiring about all of it. It’s an important book that I think can help to spread goodness around the world. Something we desperately need.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“I’ve learned how to take out my own stitches: all you need is a pair of fingernail clippers & a strong stomach.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“Make every obstacle an opportunity.” And that’s what we did.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn’t a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I’d been baptized.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“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.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“If there is a defining characteristic of a man as opposed to a boy, maybe it’s patience.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“Make every negative into a positive,” as my mother says. Nothing goes to waste, you put it all to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy.”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

“THERE ARE ANGELS on this earth and they come in subtle forms,”
― Lance Armstrong, quote from It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

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Popular quotes

“I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," Ronan Lynch said.
Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, "Do you?"
"Maybe I dreamt you," he said.
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― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. ROMANS 8:26”
― Francine Rivers, quote from Mark of the Lion Trilogy

“He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me.

Then he was gone.

Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted to
run after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you.

Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us.

I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much grief.

Bye bye, Birdie.”
― Jenny Han, quote from We'll Always Have Summer

“I knew she was right. Of course she was right. Bex was always right. She knew me better than I knew myself. But then again, isn't that a best friend's job?”
― Ally Carter, quote from United We Spy

“By far the largest single organisms that ever lived are plants, and an impressive percentage of the world’s biomass is locked up in plants. [...] The surface of the land is green because of plants, and the surface of the sea would be green too if its floating carpet of photosynthesisers were macroscopic plants instead of microorganisms too small to reflect noticeable quantities of green light. It is as though plants are going out of their way to cover every square centimetre with green, leaving none uncovered. And that is pretty much what they are doing […] From a plant’s point of view, a square centimetre of the Earth’s surface that is anything but green amounts to a negligently wasted opportunity to sweep up photons.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

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