The Incomplete Book of Running Quotes

“Perhaps you would like to start running. You never have tried before, or you did and you hated it, and now you wonder how to begin moving in a way that will keep you going. Get up. Start. Go. Move. Take a rusty first step, like the Tin Man. You will squeak. Go.”
― Peter Sagal, The Incomplete Book of Running

“We simply accept each other as we are, for in any other direction lies madness.”
― Peter Sagal, The Incomplete Book of Running

“You step outside, because real running is done outside, dammit, in the open air, where the endorphins hide.”
― Peter Sagal, The Incomplete Book of Running

“But the lesson and practice of running is, again, a faith in the possibility of positive change. That, if you run enough miles, with enough dedication and the right kind of mindset, if you accept the limitations of what's possible but refuse to accept the rutted path of what's painless, if you keep at it, if you keep going, you can become what it was you were meant to be.”
― Peter Sagal, The Incomplete Book of Running

“If there is any true value in running as a sport, it is that it is a great leveler. Runners don't gear up, armoring ourselves like football players; we strip down to the minimum and empty our hands and become what we are at our most natural, and thus we are reduced to what we all have in common: legs, lungs, heart, and mind. We are all out there on the same course, heading the same way, whatever our speed, a brother/sisterhood of chafed thighs and aching feet.”
― Peter Sagal, The Incomplete Book of Running

“No: what I have tried to remember, and occasionally achieved, is that sense of handing myself over to the moment I was in, trusting that what had brought me there would carry me through, allowing things to transpire not with effort, but with something like ease, even grace.”
― Peter Sagal, The Incomplete Book of Running

“I had always believed that suffering was a requirement for anything worthwhile: art, educational success, professional achievement, marriage, parenthood. On this day, I had found another way, though it had taken thousands of miles to get here.”
― Peter Sagal, The Incomplete Book of Running