But the fact is that I wouldn't have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this: pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

It can't be any simpler: the farewell is going to be on the Champs-Elysees.

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.

It's frustrating in the sense that I still think I could be competing at some sport at a fairly high level, which nobody cares about. Nobody wants to hear me say that.

I've given gifts in the Tour de France and it's come back to bit me. So no gifts.

Life to me is a series of false limits and my challenge as an athlete is to explore those limits

Do it even if you shouldn't, do it becuase you want to, do it becuase it will make things better.