What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Vintage International)

by Haruki Murakami

No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.

keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow.

It doesn’t matter what field you’re talking about—beating somebody else just doesn’t do it for me.

running is both exercise and a metaphor.

Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

The main thing was not the speed or distance so much as running every day, without taking a break.

the most fortunate thing is that I was born with a strong, healthy body.

The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.

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

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

If concentration is the process of just holding your breath, endurance is the art of slowly, quietly breathing at the same time you’re storing air in your lungs.

Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that.

The ones panting are beginners; the ones with quiet, measured breathing are the veterans. Their hearts, lost in thought, slowly tick away time.

As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have. That’s one of the few good points of growing older.

You have to wait until tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring.

Being eighteen until you die means you die when you’re eighteen.

No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you’ll never see reflected what’s inside.

Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself. If things go well, that is.

To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts.

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

There may not seem to be much logic to it, but it’s the life I’ve chosen for myself.