not a book, but i just finished reading these...http://www.calcycling.org/quotations.php

some choice ones:

"Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living! I take exercise every afternoon that way. Oh, to just grip your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds, avoiding collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the time when you're going to smash up. Well now, that's something! And then go home again after three hours of it, into the tub, rub down well, then into a soft shirt and down to the dinner table, with the evening paper and a glass of wine in prospect - and then to think that tomorrow I can do it all over again!" -- Jack London

"Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world." - Grant Peterson

"A bicycle ride is a flight from sadness."--James E. Starrs, The Literary Cyclist

"To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain....at cycling's core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn't matter if you're sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you're missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there's no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks." -- Scott Martin

my shoulder hurts from wrecking into a street sign at full speed the other day, and when i pull up on my bars as i tend to when skipping/starting a skid...pain. that last quote makes me want to go out and spend the rest of the day skipping down hills, shoulder pain or no.