You can believe or you can doubt yourself. It's the difference between a gap being one metre late that you're gonna launch, then it's three seconds and you're sat on the wheel and you're about to lose.

A lot of the riders end up in Monaco, but I don't need to be there for the tax purposes because I'm from the Isle of Man.

I do want to race motorbikes when I retire.

Everybody who rides a motorbike thinks they can ride MotoGP. Anybody who does a Gran Fondo thinks they can do pro cycling. Anyone who drives a Corsa thinks they can do Formula 1.

The perception is that I've always made winning look easy. People think it's easy, but they don't see what's behind it, the time away from the family. The days spent climbing, training out in all weather, climbing but trying to keep the speed for the sprint.

Cycling is unique in that in any other sport I'd be in a different weight category or discipline. What I do is a different sport to what Chris Froome does.

All that matters is to be first across the line.

The Olympics is where you see out of this world performances, isn't it?

If you don't enjoy something you can't keep at it. That's the thing that sticks with me.

It's been reported a lot that I've had two bouts of mononucleosis. The evidence suggests it wasn't two bouts, it was the same bout. I never got over it the first time. That's hard to explain to people. It makes it look like I'm not very resilient, whereas it was completely mismanaged.

I want to win wherever I race, the team's invested a lot in me.

My job in the Tour is to get the sponsor's logo in the most prominent place.

I'd love to have my achievements recognised and for people to know enough about cycling to understand what my achievements mean.

I need to be on a bike, mentally as much as physically.

The thing with depression is you don't realise you have it and even when you do you don't want to realise you have it.

Once you can accept that you have a mental illness, that is when you can work on it.

What keeps athletes going is the optimism we are going to be able to compete again.

I'm a fan of motorsport and a fan of McLaren and I was lucky to work with the company on a small scale across my career but to be able to race now with that brand on my jersey, it's pretty special. I still have to rein in my fanboy attitude sometimes.

Yorkshire is a hard place to ride a bike.

If you're on the top for your sport or 10 years it's going to seem like you've had more knock-backs than someone who has been at the top for three years.

If you're on the top for 10 years it's going to seem like you have more crashes that someone on the top for three years. If you don't win as much in your ninth or 10th year it's going seem like you are on your way out.

I'm going to do the Commonwealth Games for no other reason than national pride. It's something special getting to ride for the Isle of Man.

Second doesn't mean anything in cycling.

I use an inhaler myself and have done since I was 15.

I'm pretty happy with my career. I just know what I'm capable of.

I don't know why, but despite winning how many world championships, how many Tour stages, and being 31 years old, some people still thought I had to prove myself, you know. So I had to do the Track Worlds to try to prove myself.

The Tour de France is ridiculously hard.

The beautiful thing about cycling is that it is so accessible and that pleased me when I was younger because you felt like you could almost touch the athletes.

Between 20km and 10km to go, you want the whole team at the front. You don't necessarily want to take control, and the speed will be dictated by how many surges you get from the other teams. You don't want to go so fast they can't come, but you want to be just ahead so you're in control.

One thing I do get aggravated by is people shouting with frustration if they get pushed and shoved in sprints. I don't push and shove anyone, but I don't care if somebody does it to me.

A lot of people in the Isle of Man support me and it makes it all worthwhile when people are interested in what you're doing. I dunno if the word 'famous' is appropriate, but I'm quite well known on the Isle of Man.

I started getting into decent food after I got a house in Tuscany, near the British cycling academy's training base. For a cyclist, the area is incredible, with the flats of the basin of Florence, the heights of the Apennines and the small climbs around Chianti.

I love track racing and I'm proud to be a British cyclist and proud to pull on the jersey to represent my country.

It's so ironic that the better you get the easier it becomes to win.

I'm not getting bored with cycling or winning - I love it. But I need to give myself new targets all the time.

For any young rider even competing in the San Remo is one of the biggest things - but to win it is beyond emotion. You can't put it into words.

I have a house in a small town in Tuscany where everybody knows and looks out for each other. That's a similar mentality to on the Isle of Man.

I heal pretty well and I know if I crash on the first day of the Tour de France, I've got to get up and get on with it.

I realised my whole focus each year is about the Tour de France.

The Belgian people, they're so happy.

Training-wise, I don't have an extreme plan I stick to. I know what I have to do, I know the goal. But it's not really structured. That's the beauty of road cycling. It all depends on the conditions on the day and where you are in the world.

When I was younger, I didn't really train for the sprint - I trained to get over the mountains. I have to train it now I'm getting older. But the sprint is more born, rather than made.

I don't listen to any music when I train - I do it outdoors, and I'm not a fan of iPods on bikes.

The way I dig in to push myself through mountain climbs is totally psychological. I'm not designed to do that stuff. It's mind over matter.

It's my job. It's not a hobby, it's how I put food on the table for my family. I have to be on a bike.

I learned from BMX and skateboarding how to take a fall.

Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.

The 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion.

Identity politics is not politics at all, since it precisely negates the political as such by re-construing political positions in ethnic terms, subsuming 'ought' under 'is.'

The reality of nostalgia is nowhere better invoked than at the end of Tarkovsky's 'Solaris.' When the camera pans away from Kelvin embracing his father on the rain-soaked steps of his dacha, we realise that the scene is yet another of the simulations produced by the inscrutable planet.