Running is real. It’s all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.

We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?

People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.

It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close

There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing - and we all face that battle every day.

For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.

Every morning, just like in Alabama, I got up with the sun, ate my breakfast even before my mother and sisters and brothers, and went to school, winter, spring, and fall alike to run and jump and bend my body this way and that for Mr. Charles Riley.