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.

I am flawed, deeply flawed. I didn't invent the [doping] culture but I didn't try to stop the culture and that's my mistake, and that's what I have to be sorry for.

I still don't get golf.

I joined the swim team when I was 12, and I was the worst kid in the pool - I was put with a group of 7-year-olds.

I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. I rode when no one else would ride.

If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts.

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.