Running makes you an athlete in all areas of life...trained in the basics, prepared for whatever comes, ready to fill each hour and deal with the decisive moment.

The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal.

Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not.

Sport is an essential element of education.

To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner.

Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.

It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.