And I'm going to work as hard as I can... for cancer research and hopefully, maybe, we'll have some cures and some breakthroughs. I'd like to think I'm going to fight my brains out to be back here again next year for the Arthur Ashe recipient. I want to give it next year!
Jim Valvano

And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That's important to me too.
Jim Valvano

Be a dreamer. If you don't know how to dream, you're dead.
Jim Valvano

But try if you can to support, whether it's AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper, and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease.
Jim Valvano

Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.
Jim Valvano

Don't give up. Don't ever give up.
Jim Valvano

How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.
Jim Valvano

I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em.
Jim Valvano

I can't tell you what an honor it is, to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever.
Jim Valvano

I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going.
Jim Valvano


I talked about my family, my family's so important.
Jim Valvano

I will thank God for the day and the moment I have.
Jim Valvano

I'll also tell you that five hundred thousand people will die this year of cancer. And I'll also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease, and yet, somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background.
Jim Valvano

If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.
Jim Valvano

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
Jim Valvano

No matter what business you're in, you can't run in place or someone will pass you by. It doesn't matter how many games you've won.
Jim Valvano

Now I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day, and nothing is changed for me.
Jim Valvano

Now, I look at where I am now and I know what I wanna to do. What I would like to be able to do is to spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe some hope to others.
Jim Valvano

People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too.
Jim Valvano

Time is very precious to me. I don't know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people too.
Jim Valvano