A biography for Guy Martinhasn’t been written yet.
“I like being in control of my own destiny, really.”
“I remember, my first season was 1999, and I must have crashed about 13 times in that first year. But then, in the second season, you crash about half as much and then, in the third year, even less again.”
“I can sleep on a bloody washing line if I want to.”
“When I crash during a race and injure myself, what's the point in whinging? Because I put myself in that position. No one's making me race motorbikes - I want to go and race motorbikes. The most annoying thing for me is lying in hospital and not being able to get to work. I get beside myself.”
“When you dead, you dead.”
“I've got my own TV stuff on the go, and it's all a bit oddball - it's one-offs, and I can do what, when, and how I want it, really. I don't have any scripts or people telling me to do stuff twice.”
“The only thing I keep from the races I've won are the handle bar grips from the bike, the rubber bits.”
“I enjoy working on anything mechanical.”
“The idea for the 'Speed' series was to break the record for the fastest push bike.”
“Going back because it's what I did and I was sort of all right at it is not a good reason to race the TT.”
“Life is all about setting yourself goals and then achieving them.”
“People deal with the concentration needed to do well in a two-hour race in different ways.”
“I don't see coming down to London and talking to people and making TV shows as real work. The only reason I do it is because they keep coming up with decent ideas.”
“I'm not an idiot. Everything is calculated that I do.”
“I was working for Martin Finnegan. He was my best mate in racing. I went to his wedding in November 2007. No-one else from the racing world was invited apart from me and my girlfriend. The funeral was the following May.”
“I've always had a proper job. I don't know anything else.”
“I don't go out. I work, go racing, then go to my shed and make things.”
“Dentists, doctors, surveyors from Latvia wanted to come to England, do anything to get away from the Soviet regime.”
“The most common way to crash coming out of a corner is to highside - which is where you accelerate out of the corner, and the rear loses grip, then suddenly finds grip and chucks you off the bike.”
“Speed on its own isn't always so exciting. On a racing motorbike, I can do over 180 mph, which is fast, but not as fast as the airliners that we all climb aboard to fly off on holiday. Modern passenger jets can cruise at between 500 and 600 mph, but sitting in an aeroplane like that for hours on end isn't very exciting, is it?”