I wasn't in a position to defend myself. Sometimes it's a brutal profession. The first thing I thought of at the time was revenge. I have a more levelheaded take on the issue today.

Of course they were saying: No doping! But as a rider, it's difficult to believe that things can really change from one day to the next.

The message I understood was this: Just don't get caught!

The patient in the bed next to me told me that the newspapers were reporting on the test, and it was on television all day long.

My mother had to justify the fact that she had heart pills.

The truth is that things were already going so poorly for me that nothing surprised me anymore. But then the BKA sent 20 agents to search my house.

I made a big mistake. There's no doubt about it. But there have been positive testing cases in the past where the offender wasn't attacked to quite the same extent, especially not by other riders.

Riders called me up afterwards to say that they had had no other choice. I couldn't understand the way they changed their tune.

I wouldn't call it an addiction. But the truth is, when you join a team as a new professional you encounter a system. As a young rider, older riders let you know how the business works.

I can count off on one hand the number of times I've used testosterone gel - because it doesn't really do much.

I assumed the amount wouldn't be detectable. I also didn't feel that I had done anything wrong.

To do nothing is the way to be nothing.

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own to be what no others are and to do what no other can do.

Getting on stage and performing and standing under lights is such an unsettling experience - in a good and bad way - but it's the only place I can go to feel comfortable.

I let ballplayers yell back at me because I wasn't trying to prove I'm boss. I know I'm boss.

A government is the most dangerous threat to man

Netflix is in every country except China and North Korea. Enough people have seen the show. I mean, I'm in Patagonia and people recognize the show [ Narcos].

Being too happy is bad for you. 8 on 1 10-scale is just right. Eg. cancer patients are more likely to survive if they're at an 8 instead of 9 or 10.

I don't need to think that I'm being loomed over my shoulder in order to behave in a way that's moral.

The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.

There's birth, there's death, and in between there's maintenance.