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

Sport is singularly able to give us peak experience where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.

Like everyone else, I want to be challenged. I want to find out whether or not I am a coward. I want to see how much effort I can put out . . . what I can endure . . . if I measure up. Running allows that.

Fitness has to be fun. If it is not play there will be no fitness. Play, you see, is where the process. Fitness is merely the product.

The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you've got.

I will not last forever. But I am damn well going to know I have been here.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.