Many times, I left the prison thinking, 'I'm smart. I can make it. I won't get caught up again.' But you get off downtown Skid Row, and you're a target for all of the environmental harms in that area. The pain and trauma in that area is so thick, you can almost reach your hand out and touch it.

I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.

The loss of my childhood was the price for becoming the youngest world champion in history. When you have to fight every day from a young age, your soul can be contaminated. I lost my childhood. I never really had it. Today I have to be careful not to become cruel, because I became a soldier too early.

I do not want to continue cycling until I am 35. I want to make something else out of my life, too. There are other things besides a bike and racing.

Life is like an ice-cream cone, you have to lick it one day at a time.

It is happily and kindly provided that in every life there are certain pauses, and interruptions, which force consideration upon the careless, and seriousness upon the light, points of time where one course of action ends and another begins.