To be free and to live a free life - that is the most beautiful thing there is.

I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do.

My strength was that I am more balanced and calmer than most other riders.

If I had been born with an aggressive character, then maybe my palmares would have been longer.

Everybody tells me that I never look as if I'm suffering. But, when I watch videotapes of a race, I always remember the pain I had to endure.

I did try to win a sixth, but it was not to be.

Sooner or later a rider will emerge who will win more Tours. In every sport we have seen how the records eventually get broken and cycling is no exception.

I didn't feel I had to prove anything more.

A life without goal is a ship without rudder!

I'm not comically oriented. I get angry and I start complaining and then people start laughing. I don't even want them to laugh half the time.

There must be a cloud in my head, rain keeps falling from my eyes

Bureaucrats sometimes do not have the correct information, while citizens and users of resources do.

There are reports on the news tonight that members of the Taliban feel persecuted and fear their own safety. So now they know what it is like to feel like a woman in their country.

And even though he felt pitiful and ridiculous, he didn't want it to end, because he knew the absence of her would hurt more than any breakup ever could.

The pious and just honoring of ourselves may be thought the fountainhead from whence every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth.

Life is full of horrible mistakes.

To celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation means to be wrapped in a warm embrace.

I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.