The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith and to become one's own person, utterly and completely.

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.

If marathoners finish they win.

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.

The most important thing I learned [from running] is that there is only one runner in this race, and that is me.

There is nothing more certain than the defeat of the man who gives up.

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.