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.

The idea that anybody was forced, or pressured, or encouraged, is not true.

So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it's meant to improve us.

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.

It's a fact that children with cancer have higher cure rates than adults with cancer, and I wonder if the reason is their natural, unthinking bravery... Adults know too much about failure; they're more cynical and resigned and fearful.

I love this race from the very depths of my heart. It gives me motivation and it transcendsme like nothing else in the world.

I guess if I looked at it from an athletic standpoint, I don't really need to win another Tour. Seven Tours for me was a dream, six broke the record, so that eight doesn't really mean much.