Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there" was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.

It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship.

What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It's a parallel thing in me.

Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.

Sometimes it's not the people who change, it's the mask that falls off.