"You never have the wind with you -- either it is against you or you're having a good day"
Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles
"My legs and a silly something in me cry out for knocking the milestones down one by one and stopping at nothing.
For years I have been telling myself that it's not the miles in the life that count but the life in the miles, but still this silly restlessness hurries me on."
Harold Elvin, The ride to Chandigarh
"The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard."
Sloan Wilson
"Anyone interested in winning Olympic gold medals must select his or her parents very carefully"
Per-olof Astrand
"It doesn't get any easier, you just get faster"
Greg LeMond
"Ride lots."
Eddy Merckx
"Ride a bike, ride a bike, ride a bike"
Fausto Coppi
"It's not a science. It's a war"
Mike Neel
"Men invented war so they could be among themselves. In peacetime, they have bike racing."
Gabriele Rolin
"It was eleven more than necessary"
Jacques Anquetil, after winning a race by twelve seconds
"Winning is a matter of training and tranquillity"
Alex Zulle
"There's a terrible delight in watching a rival sink without a trace"
Bernard Hinault
"To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain. Sure the sport is fun with its seamless pacelines and secret singletrack, its post-ride pig-outs and soft muscles grown wonderfully hard. But at cycling's core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach.
It doesn't matter if you're sprinting for an Olympic gold medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you're missing the essence of the sport."
Scott Martin
"Good morale in cycling comes from good legs"
Sean Yates
"It's really something to see, a climber waiting to attack. Any other sort of attack can be neutralized, but when a climber goes there's little the non-climbers can do"
Ralph Hurne, The Yellow Jersey
"You can say that climbers suffer the same as the other riders, but they suffer in a different way. You feel the pain, but you're glad to be there."
Richard Virenque
"It's not the fastest rider who wins a downhill, it's the one who gets to the bottom in the shortest time."
Francois Gachet
"Power. think about the word. It is what separates casual riders from the elite. You can be a precision bike handler, a wheelsucker extraordinarie, an elegant pedaler -- but if you can't crank when the crunch comes, you'll be left behind."
Fred Matheny
"I believe in pacing. I go as hard as I can, and whether I'm leading or not I'll keep the same pace. So far, this has been good enough."
Juli Furtado
"A solo attack is just intuition, just feeling, nothing short of destiny that tells you to go for it."
Jacky Durand
"Bike racing is art. Art is driven by passion, by emotions, by unknowns thoughts. The blood that pumps through my veins is stirred by emotion. It's the same for every athlete. And that's why we do this."
Chris Carmichael
"The truly extraordinarily feature of the bike is that, like the very greatest teacher, it encourages you to find the answers from somewhere deep down inside yourself and not merely take them from someone else.
When I began my adventure into myself on my bike I did not need to be told that I had to eat more of the right kind of food. I just knew I had to do it or else my legs would not work
I had never listened or cared about those long terrifying lectures about the evils of smoking -- complete with colored slides of blackened lungs -- but I did know, after some time in the saddle, that I just had to give up cigarettes.
I did not need an expensive psychiatrist to tell me why I was depressed since, after a brisk ride, I was depressed no more."
Tom Davies Merlyin the Magician and the Pacific Coast Highway
"A bicycle ride is a flight from sadness"
James E. Starrs, The Noiseless Tenor
"Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him.
We know he got on the bicycle and started to move.
We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that is at any point he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it.
That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things."
William Golding, A moving Target
"In life's orchestra, the bike is the double bass. Hard to forget it"
Paul Fournel, Need for the bike
"There's something of the peasant in the pedaler. They share a taste for
nature, submission to the elements, patience, thrift, obstinacy, and the
sense of acceleration."
Paul Fournel, Need for the bike
"I always watch for bouts of melancholy, a deep and hidden (to me) trait
of my soul, and I keep an eye out for any loss of desire. I know that if
I succumb to depression, it will start with a breakdown in my thighs. It
will start with cycling sluggishness, and the rest will follow"
Paul Fournel, Need for the bike
"Did you have a mechanical on that last hill repeat? No, it was a
biological: my legs"
SP to KT, Bike Trip Hill Repeats, 3/2013
"Everyone has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth"
Mike
Tyson, on strategy