It had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record.

It's amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile.

If I faltered, there would be no arms to hold me and the world would be a cold and forbidding place.

Your spikes, which were really quite long then, would catch the material of the track and your shoe would get heavier. I was simply filing them down and rubbing some graphite on the spikes, so that I thought I would run more effectively.

I couldn't disappoint people. I did not want to fail and exhaust myself, because I was the kind of runner who trained so little that I couldn't race again within another 10 days.

If a man coaches himself, then he has only himself to blame when he is beaten.

I wanted to be a neurologist. That seemed to be the most difficult, most intriguing, and the most important aspect of medicine, which had links with psychology, aggression, behavior, and human affairs.