Possibilities are like cancer. The more I think about them, the more they multiply, and there's no way to stop them. I'm out of control.

Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.

We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.

How much do you love me?' Midori asked. 'Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,' I said.

Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.

The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.

At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.