Make an obstacle an opportunity, make a negative a positive.

In my most painful moments on the bike, I am at my most curious and I wonder each and every time how I will respond.

I've committed to surfing the rest of my life.

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.

On a friendship with former president George W. Bush: He's a personal friend, but we've all got the right not to agree with our friends.

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. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven. If so, I was going to reply, You know what? You're right. Fine.

Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things-whether health or a car or an old sense of self-has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.