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

About the author

Popular quotes

“No one could place two-thirds of a world's population on the Dole and keep them there forever without the entire system crashing ”
― David Weber, quote from Flag in Exile

“ Wasting time is a stupid thing to do in this big ol' ugly world.”
― Rochelle Maya Callen, quote from Ashes and Ice

“I have never before considered the feelings of a cow. I suppose they must not care for us at all.’ ‘They are only dumb beasts,’ Laurence said, ‘and such thought surely beyond them. Any animal will defend its life and young, but that is not the same as being a thinking, reasoning creature.’ ‘Only, how could one be certain?’ Temeraire said. ‘After all, if one wishes to be particularly dull, one might be like that fellow Salcombe, and say that dragons are also dumb beasts. And I am quite sure the bunyips are not, though they do not seem to talk at all: they are only nasty thinking creatures. It is not very fair, though, that I should allow them to have sense because they will contrive one unpleasantness after another; what if cows are very clever, only they do not like to make a fuss about it?’ ‘If they dislike fuss enough to tolerate being eaten,’ Laurence said, with rather an amused expression, ‘surely it need not matter one way or another.’ ‘Perhaps they think they will be eaten anyway, as they are so delicious,”
― Naomi Novik, quote from Tongues of Serpents

“In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile ”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Roboter-Visionen

“She is the gin. Cold, intoxicating. Gives you a rush, makes you warm inside, makes you lose your head. Take too much, it makes you sick and shuts you down.

He is the coffee, hot, steaming, filtered. You have to add stuff to it to make it taste good. Grinds your stomach, makes you jittery, wired, and tense. Bad trip, keeps you up, burns you out.

Coffee and gin don’t mix, never do, everybody keeps trying and trying to make it taste good.”
― Henry Rollins, quote from See A Grown Man Cry/Now Watch Him Die

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.