What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

(At a jogging pace I generally can cover six miles in an hour.)

I’ll be happy if running and I can grow old together.

I never had any ambitions to be a novelist. I just had this strong desire to write a novel. No concrete image of what I wanted to write about, just the conviction that if I wrote it now I could come up with something that I’d find convincing. When I thought about sitting down at my desk at home and setting out to write I realized I didn’t even own

Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another new, deep hole. But as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening a hole in the hard rock and locating a new water vein.

a very strange feeling—consciousness trying to deny consciousness. You have to force yourself into an inorganic place. Instinctively I realized that this was the only way to survive.

They might not amount to much, but they are personal lessons I’ve learned through actually putting my own body in motion, and thereby discovering that suffering is optional. They may not be lessons you can generalize, but that’s because what’s presented here is me, the kind of person I am.

Writing itself is mental labor, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labor.

By sticking my nose into all sorts of places, I acquired the practical skills I needed to live.

I pass twenty-two miles. I’ve never run more than twenty-two miles, so this is terra incognita.