Quotes from Jeff Bauman

I got myself into trouble. I was drinking and partying a lot and it caught up with me.

I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing my face next to Jake Gyllenhaal's.

I don't know, I'm just a weird person like that, I'm kind of sensitive and I feel bad for people that hurt other people 'cause it's just awful.

I took my hand off the pause button. I had my life on pause. You get stuck, especially when you're drinking and isolating. I started homing in on what I wanted to do as a person. Just try to grow up.

Sometimes I think, 'Maybe I could have a drink or two.' But then I think about it, and I just don't want to. It's just not in the cards. I know what I feel like now that I don't drink. I know what it feels like not to be hungover, trying to put my legs on.

In my eyes, there's heroes I look up to. People who saved me - my caretakers, people at Boston Medical Center. My surgeon. The people that pulled me off that ground, who pulled me out. Those are my heroes. The police. The paramedics. Those are the true heroes.

But I know something else, too: bad people are rare. Good people are everywhere.

For so long I focused on all that I had lost - my legs, my anonymity, even my freedom in a way. I couldn't jump in the car, blast some music and just get away for a bit. I couldn't play basketball with my brothers. I couldn't even get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom without making it some sort of production.

Everyone deals with loss.

I just want to get to the places I can't get in the wheelchair, you know? I want to stand up.

Knowing that I might be encouraging others by facing my own difficulties is what helps me get out of bed in the morning.

I know exactly when my life changed: when I looked into the face of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was 2:48 P. M. on April 15, 2013 - one minute before the most high profile terrorist event on United States soil since September 11th - and he was standing right beside me.

Why sit, be negative and be sad and depressed? You got to kind of push everything to the side and just focus on just getting better.

I see my family every day and I'm starting my own family now. I'm very thankful and grateful and there's nothing but positivity and love in my life.

I'm just glad I'm still here.

Everyone kept saying, 'The terrorists didn't win. You won! We won! You survived!' That's just weird to me. Nobody wins in these situations. I don't see winners and losers in tragic events.

Even in the ambulance ride I was trying to say something, trying to say, like, 'I knew who did it, I knew what went on.' And then I think they were kind of thrown back by that. They were like, 'What? You know what went on? You know what happened?' And I was like, 'Yeah, I saw the guy.'

I remember when the photograph was taken. The famous one, I mean. The one of me being rushed from the Boston Marathon bombing without my legs.

Hero.' I've always struggled with that word. I'm just a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Even now, a year later, people ask me about the Wheelchair Photo: what do I think about it? Does it bother me? The honest answer: I don't think about it. I glanced at the photo once, about a week after the bombing. I knew immediately I never wanted to look at it again.

I want to show people you can overcome a tragedy.

I consider myself really lucky every single day. To the point where I feel guilty a lot because I have so much and so many other people don't have what I have.

I was still conscious when I was being transported from the blast site to the hospital.

Right when I was lying on the ground and saw my legs, I didn't think first, 'I'm going to die.' I was thinking, 'I'm not going to run again. I can't play basketball. I'm not going to skate.'