Tour De Quotes & Sayings

The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father. — Lance Armstrong

Sara Blair's Harlem Crossroads is an important addition to the body of literature that currently exists about Harlem. It brilliantly illuminates the complex relationship between photographic representation and race, and adds new insight into the ways in which this one black community has figured in both the critical and public imaginations. Harlem Crossroads is a tour de force. — Dawoud Bey

You can't ride the Tour de France on mineral water. — Jacques Anquetil

Years ago, when I was about to go on a book tour for Someplace to Be Flying, my editor at the time Terri Windling and I sat down to figure out what to call what I was writing for the interviews that were to come. Terri came up with the term mythic fiction and I think that sums it up perfectly. There are almost invariably mythic elements in my fiction (as well as bits of folk and faerie lore) and the term doesn't lock me into writing only in an urban setting since many of my stories take place in rural areas. It never caught on, but when I don't describe what I do as simply fiction, I'll go with mythic fiction. — Charles De Lint

I think it is just terrible and disgusting how everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved winning seven Tour de France races while on drugs ... When I was on drugs I couldn't even find my bike. — Willie Nelson

Alec Baldwin is an incredible ... I mean this guy is a tour de force when you talk about people that are generous and available and somebody you could approach and I have ideas. — Kate Hudson

Snoop is a tour de force! It's one of the smartest and most original books I've come across in a long time. I devoured it and then rushed over to clean up my desk and change my iPod playlist. — Richard Florida

Timothy Spall - best known to mainstream audiences as Wormtail in the Harry Potter series - delivers an Oscar-caliber tour de force reminiscent of Charles Laughton — Lou Lumenick

Absolutely delightful, at first for its unspoiled picture of late-nineteenth-century Japan as seen through the eyes of three remarkable but very different Americans, [the missionary William Elliot Griffis [1843-1928], the scientist Edward Sylvester Morse [1838-1925], and the writer Lafcadio Hearn], and then for the marvelous reconstruction of how Japan worked on their minds, radically changing their perceptions of the country and the whole relationship between East and West
between the barbarian and the civilized. The book is a tour de force. — Edwin O. Reischauer

I've always had this idea that if you're going to try something, if you're going to expend that first big block of effort and energy to participate - whether it's riding the Tour de France or applying for a new job or coaching your daughter's soccer team - you might as well go ahead and give whatever else it takes to win, I mean, I'm going to be there no matter what, right? Why not go ahead and get the victory? — Johan Bruyneel

There is no way I would play guitar like a tour de force like I did in Led Zeppelin. John Bonham, phenomenal drummer, young man with his technique, but do you think he would ever have the opportunity to play like that in another band? Of course he hadn't. — Jimmy Page

Every bit as visceral and hypnotic as its award-winning predecessor, On the Ropes is a tour-de-force of fluid, yet detailed storytelling. — Dave Gibbons

Miguel Indurain, five-time winner of the Tour de France, reported a resting heart rate of only 28 bpm. The reason for this is that, with appropriate training, the heart muscle increases in both size and strength. — Roy Benson

After illuminating the work of Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Louise Bourgeois, Balthus, and other modern artists, Mieke Bal again demonstrates her extraordinary flair for cultural criticism in taking on the work of Doris Salcedo, exploring the philosophical and aesthetic stakes of this committed political art and the relation between beauty, violence, and memory. A tour de force. — Jonathan Culler

The problem is not with the athletes, but with us. No matter how blatant the drug use may be, we don't stop watching the Tour de France. Maybe we should just turn off the television and get on our own bikes. — Peter Singer

A remarkable tour de force that will hopefully end forever the argument that science and the spiritual are opposed to one another. This wonderful collection of facts and arguments, written in a good-natured, almost conversational style, makes it easy to loosen yourself from your preconceptions and enjoy seeing reality more clearly and completely. We have needed such a book for a long time. — James Fadiman

Peter Watts has taken the core myths of the First Contact story and shaken them to pieces. The result is a shocking and mesmerizing performance, a tour-de-force of provocative and often alarming ideas. It is a rare novel that has the potential to set science fiction on an entirely new course. Blindsight is such a book. — Karl Schroeder

The problem with being a Tour de France winner is you always have that feeling of disappointment if you don't win again. That's the curse of the Tour de France. — Greg LeMond

Well, you better ride like you stole something 'cause you are about to win a stage in the Tour de Fance. — Lance Armstrong

A study by the University of Zurich demonstrates a link between attractiveness and endurance performance, showing that successful Tour de France cyclists are judged as more attractive. — Anonymous

Bright-shirted racers of the Tour de France zoomed by like fantastically bicycling macaws. — Joseph O'Neill

When I was first writing, I was writing mostly about sporting events, which was really what my assignments were. I was working on the Tour de France bike race and the Barcelona Olympic Games, and those songs tend to be very big, very bombastic-type music, which is the type of music that I love to write. — John Tesh

Every day since the start of the Tour de France, the popular 'Le Parisien' newspaper has published a story about a book written with the bicycle in mind. — Elaine Sciolino

IN GENERAL CANFAB ,TERRORISM IS BREWED AND COUNSELED BY WORLD MATURED MASTER BRAINS. RESULTING ENTIRE GLOBAL CITIZENS BROOKING THE CREAM OF CROP. OBVIOUSLY, POWER FIRE ON LINE LIVE HAS TO BE ENGULFED RIGHT NOW TO CATECHIZE IRON PRESS ON EX-CON WRONG DOER TOUR DE FORCE STUNT FEATS. — Various

The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act ... What would the average man (sic) do with a full consciousness of absurdity? He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness. He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror. — Ernest Becker

He managed to do this 'tour de force' of styles without ever breaking the narrative structure of the chapter he was writing. It is the most brilliant parody of writing styles that I have ever read. — Frederick Lenz

A metaphysical tour de force of untethered meaning and involuting interlocking contrapuntal rhythms, 'The Clock' is more than a movie or even a work of art. It is so strange and other-ish that it becomes a stream-of-consciousness algorithm unto itself - something almost inhuman. — Jerry Saltz

Thanks to the Tour de France, riding the Champs-Elysees has a great cycling history. — Marianne Vos

As a former District Attorney and Attorney General, I know the urgency of providing safe homes, schools and neighborhoods for all. This remarkable tour-de-force is a powerful study of one promising solution: a data-rich, eminently readable demonstration of why we should treat gun violence as an American epidemic. — Scott Harshbarger

Bitcoin is a technological tour de force — Bill Gates

Sometimes, sport is just plain pleasing to the eye, like watching La Belle France flit by on television during the Tour de France. I can do that for hours. — George Vecsey

An unforgettable tale of love, lust, faith, betrayal, and redemption. A powerful, mesmerizing suspense novel-a tour de force! — Judith Kelman

There were no shortcuts, I realized. It took years of racing to build up the mind and body and character until a rider had logged hundreds of races and thousands of miles of road. I wouldn't be able to win a Tour de France until I had enough iron in my legs, and lungs, and brain and Heart. — Lance Armstrong

I have contacts with the Tour de France which keep me close to cycling. — Bernard Hinault

The heavy odds against finding the desired ... work of art in the mess and flux of life, as opposed to the serene orderliness of imagined reality, give a special tense dazzle and an atmosphere of tour de force to any photographs that succeed in the search. — Janet Malcolm

Gibney, we gotta win this fucking Tour de France. — Lance Armstrong

I am working as public relations director for the Tour de France and maintaining my farm. — Bernard Hinault

If you go to Wikipedia and you look at the Tour de France, there's this huge block in World War One with no winners, and there's another block in World War Two. And then it seems like there's another world war. — Lance Armstrong

A WILD, MAD, HILARIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY MOVING TALE IT IS VERY DIFFICULT to classify The Man Who Was Thursday. It is possible to say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous criminals and brilliant policemen; but it was to be expected that the author of the Father Brown stories should tell a detective story like no-one else. On this level, therefore, The Man Who Was Thursday succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a magnificent tour-de-force of suspense-writing. However, — G.K. Chesterton

When you're the oldest rider at the Tour de France, you really feel it. — Jens Voigt

Life is short, and the Tour de France long. — Giles Smith

Lance Armstrong showed up, and I started talking to him; I saw all these people with cancer who followed him to Paris for the Tour de France, and I saw the difference he was making in their lives. That put it together for me ... having it be not so much about me, but [my being] a vehicle for it. — Michael J. Fox

De Tocqueville, after his tour of the United States in 1831, was to comment that "The Senate contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men of America. Scarcely an individual is to be seen in it who has not had an active and illustrious career: the Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe." De Tocqueville was not the only foreign observer deeply impressed. The Victorian historian Sir Henry Maine said that the Senate was "the only thoroughly successful institution which has been established since the tide of modern democracy began to run." Prime Minister William Gladstone called it "the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics. — Robert A. Caro

In PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein set out to showcase, in sometimes startling ways, the continuing relevance of a classic philosopher. But what's remarkable is that she actually brings off this tour de force with both madcap brilliance and commanding authority. — Michael Dirda

What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well ... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for. — Poul Anderson

I've got a little boy coming and I can't wait. It's going to be the biggest thing that has happened to me in my life so far. Bigger than any Tour de France win. — Chris Froome

If I want to be up for an Academy Award, I'm either going to have to play a tour de force of some kind or have a tracheotomy just before the nominations. — Burt Reynolds

Keep driving," said a soft voice in my ear. "She will not bite if you keep driving."
Fuck that. Fuck that idea like the fucking Captain of the Thai Fuck Team fucking at the fucking Tour de Fuck. — David Wong

I wanted to win the Tour de France. And when I won it once, I wanted to do it again, and again, and again, it just kept going. So there wasn't another competitive environment. — Lance Armstrong

I could definitely rock out to Kraftwerk's "Tour De France," Tubeway Army, or Gary Numan. All of that stuff has an infectious beat, but with "Oh Yeah," I can't even identify what's going on. It sounds like typewriter keys, a couple of synth notes and then this really deep "Oh yeah," which I always picture as Andre The Giant on vocals. — Margaret Cho

Cycling has nothing to do with the Tour de France. Racing a bike is a totally different sport than just being into cycling. Cycling is this therapeutic, beautiful mode of transportation where you attach yourself to this machine and it becomes part of you. Then you can go to all of these new places that you weren't able to go before, and that has nothing to do with racing. I'm not a bike racer; I'm a bike rider. I love riding my bike, but I also love testing what I can do on my bike. So, in that regard, I am a racer. But if I had been born in Belgium and I had to race in Belgium all the time, I would've never gotten to the level that I am now, because the racing over there is so stressful. It just takes everything away from the niceness of being able to ride a bike. — Taylor Phinney

It was very quiet at the hotel, as if there had been a death in the family. When you have quit the Tour, nobody really knows what to say or do. ( ... ) Everything I'd previously achieved meant nothing; all I was now was a pro rider who couldn't finish the Tour de France. — David Millar

I'm lucky that mountian biking wasn't around when I was 20, because I wouldn't have won the Tour de France. It's my kind of sport - hard, individualistic, and not a lot of tactics. — Greg LeMond

And two balls minus one, six titles at the tour de France. — Bo Burnham

The Tour (de France) is essentially a math problem, a 2,000-mile race over three weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less. How do you propel yourself through space on a bicycle, sometimes steeply uphill, at a speed sustainable for three weeks? Every second counts. — Lance Armstrong

It gave me a chance to re-evaluate my life and my career. Cancer certainly gives things a new perspective. I would not have won the Tour de France if I had not had cancer. It gave me new strength and focus. — Lance Armstrong

What a joy it is to read a book that shocks one into remembering just how high one's literary standards should be. ... a tour de force by one of England's best novelists ... . Atonement is a spectacular book; as good a novel - and more satisfying ... - than anything McEwan has written ... .sublimely written narrative ... . The Dunkirk passage is a stupendous piece of writing, a set piece that could easily stand on its own. ... — Noah Richler

Seattle's Moraine not only make Washington State proud, but also the whole American progressive music scene joyful ... It's simply an impressive dead on eleven song tour de force ... GET THIS! Highly Recommended! — Lee Henderson

I'd love to follow the Tour de France one day. It's a really exciting spectacle. I've only seen it once as it was coming into Paris and that was very exciting for me. I have memories of that. — Bryan Ferry

Truth is, a triathlete won the Tour de France seven times. — Lance Armstrong

A. S. Byatt is a writer in mid-career whose time has certainly come, because 'Possession' is a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to inspection without, for a moment, ceasing to delight. — Jay Parini

Noomi [Rapace] felt fresh. And she's passionate and ambitious in all the right ways. She's a tour de force. Every time I was trying to have a discussion with the actors, she'd be pulling out a blade out from underneath her gypsy skirt and menace someone saying, "Maybe I should slit your throat." — Kam Williams

With 'Anna Karenina,' I just think it's a stunning visual tour de force for a director who is at the top of his game. — Eric Fellner

Greg Broadmore's fertile and twisted imagination has conjoined multiple genres, memories, and a sharp sense of pulp, colonialist nostalgia/parody in this lavish, fully realized, imaginative tour-de-force. It's Jules Verne meets Fritz Lang meets Tintin.
It's beyond Steampunk. It's clearly an insatiable passion for the talismans of a bygone civilization and it's slavish addiction to the early industrial age in all it's filigreed, ignorant glory. Greg has raised the bar. — Adam Savage

I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance. — Sally Kirkland

My Real Children starts quietly, then suddenly takes you on two roller-coaster rides at once, swooping dizzily through a double panorama and ending in a sort of super Sophie's Choice. A daring tour de force. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Tithing is like training wheels when it comes to giving. It's intended to help you get started, but not recommended for the Tour de France. — John Ortberg

Creating a top team and being in a position to win the Tour de France will give me a nice feeling. But I know it is not easy to create a top team from zero. You need good riders, good staff, a lot of preparation and, most important, a lot of sponsors. — Fernando Alonso

To build an empire - or win seven Tour de Frances in a row - you must have a Lone Star-size ego and a dash of megalomania. — Stephen Rodrick

The Ten Commandments are preoccupied with goodness. Each commandment is a moral tour de force. Together they present the most compelling plan ever devised for a better life and good world. Yet, they were written - and in the eyes of hundreds of millions, revealed by the Creator - three thousand years ago. The Ten Commandments are what began humanity's long, arduous journey toward moral progress. — Dennis Prager

Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren't that many tour-de-force roles out there for women, — Aaron Sorkin

I think everyone lifts themselves that little bit extra for the Tour de France, being the pinnacle of our cycling calendar. — Chris Froome

From my earliest days I had a feeling that adventures lay in store for me. — Henrietta-Lucy Dillon De La Tour Du Pin Gouvernet

I've given gifts in the Tour de France and it's come back to bit me. So no gifts. — Lance Armstrong

I spent another six years in Europe covering sporting events such as the Tour de France. — John Tesh

I'm not a fan - this is a personal preference - I'm not a fan of tour-de-force writing. I admire it, but it's not where my inclination is. I want to hide. — Tracy Letts

I've always been making original music. I think that when I sat down with Losing Focus, I approached it different. I had a clearer understanding of who I was talking to, because I was able to go out and tour and see them right in front of me. I wanted to speak to them and speak about this lifestyle. — Young De

You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit. — Lance Armstrong

The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives - everything you need for a great sports drama. — Asif Kapadia

If you weren't a risk-taker, you were always going to be a step behind. You could be the best cyclist in the world, but if you weren't a risk-taker, you weren't going to win the Tour de France. — Tyler Hamilton