Jim Valvano

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

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!

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.

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.

I talked about my family my family's so important.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Don't give up. Don't ever give up.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children's life. It may save someone you love. And it's very important.