What do you mean, 'playing really creatively'? Can you give me an example?" "Hmm, let's see ... you send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state. Probably.

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.

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.

Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people.

It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride.

Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.

To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm.