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

The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life.

We who run...are different from those who merely study us. We are out there experiencing what they are trying to put into words.

If marathoners finish they win.

The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in a year.... But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child.

Exercise is done against one's wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse.