If your body is damaged, wounded, it can be fixed, but if inside, mentally, you are wounded you cannot fix it, it's hard.

You must do as your people do. If my people are poor, I must be poor. People ask me, 'Why don't you find a personal coach or a private car?' I can't. Then I won't be part of my people.

What can you do if a part of it is uphill? You can't work out another route. You've just got to run the one they give you. But they tell me London is a nice course. Even the cobbles, I hope, are not very much of a problem for me.

The more you are getting older, you lose a little something. Of course there is another advantage, because of your long experience you can use it.

Many people know that Ethiopia is poor. When I break a world record, maybe people get to know something else about Ethiopia, something good. We can't make planes or cars, we don't have the materials. We do what we can.

I was the kind of child who worked hard every day with the cows and sheep - I was a very aggressive boy.

When I run in Ethiopia, I look out and see eucalyptus trees and rivers.