The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Quotes

“I'm a human being and I've got thoughts and secrets and bloody life inside me that he doesn't know is there, and he'll never know what's there because he's stupid. I suppose you'll laugh at this, me saying the governor's a stupid bastard when I know hardly how to write and he can read and write and add-up like a professor. But what I say is true right enough. He's stupid, and I'm not, because I can see further into the likes of him than he can see into the likes of me.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“the long-distance run of an early morning makes me think that every run like this is a life- a little life, I know- but a life as full of misery and happiness and things happening as you can ever get really around yourself”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“You should think about nobody and go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people holding mugs of water and bottles of iodine in case you fall and cut yourself so that they can pick you up - even if you want to stay where you are - and get you moving again.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“I was neither glad nor unhappy to see her, but maybe that's what shock does, because I was surprised, that I will say.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“Because when on a raw and frosty morning I get up at five o'clock and stand shivering my belly off on the stone floor and all the rest still have another hour to snooze before the bells go, I slink downstairs through all the corridors to the big outside door with a permit running-card in my fist, I feel like the first and last man in the world, both at once, if you can believe what I'm trying to say.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“Everything's dead, but good, because it's dead before coming alive, not dead after being alive. That's how I look at it.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“And when the governor kept saying how 'we' wanted you to do this; and 'we' wanted you to do that, I kept looking round for the other blokes, wondering how many of them there was. Of course, I knew there were thousands of them, but as far as I knew only one was in the room. And there are thousands of them, all over the poxeaten country, in shops, offices, railway stations, cars, houses, pubs—In-law blokes like you and them, all on the watch for Out-law blokes like me and us—and waiting to phone for the coppers as soon as we make a false move. And it'll always be there, I'll tell you that now, because I haven't finished making all my false moves yet, and I dare say I won't until I kick the bucket.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“Защото аз никога не се надбягвам — аз просто тичам и някак си подсъзнателно чувствам, че забравя ли състезанието и побягна равномерно, без да мисля, че тичам, винаги ще печеля.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“I wonder if I'm the only one in the running business with this system of forgetting that I'm running because I'm too busy thinking.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“Sometimes I think that I've never been so free as during that couple of hours when I'm trotting up the path out of the gates and turning by that bare-faced, big-bellied oak tree at the lane end. Everything's dead, but good, because it's dead before coming alive, not dead after being alive.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“Преди, през целия си разбойнически живот, аз нямах време и покой за мислене, а сега мислите ми текат плавно и ме тревожи само това, че често не мога да ги спра, и чувствам как мозъкът ми се гърчи, премръзва сякаш, парализира се — тогава му давам отдих, като политам стремително надолу по падината, през къпинака.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“Poi lui svoltò in una macchia d'alberi e cespugli dove non riuscii più a vederlo, e non vedevo più nessuno, e allora compresi che cos'era la solitudine del maratoneta in corsa attraverso la campagna, rendendomi conto che per quanto mi riguardava questa sensazione era l'unica onestà e realtà esistente al mondo e che io, sapendolo, non sarei mai stato diverso, quali che fossero le mie sensazioni in certi momenti, e qualsiasi cosa gli altri cercassero di dirmi.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“I run to a steady jog-trot rhythm, and soon it was so smooth that I forgot I was running, and I was hardly able to know that my legs were lifting and falling and my arms going in and out, and my lungs didn't seem to be working at all, and my heart stopped that wicked thumping I always get at the beginning of a run. Because you see I never race at all; I just run, and somehow I know that if I forget I'm racing and only jog-trot along until I don't know I'm running I always win the race. For when my eyes recognize that I'm getting near the end of my course -by seeing a stile or cottage corner- I put on a spurt, and such a fast big spurt it is because I feel that up till then I haven't been running and that I've used up no energy at all.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“I can't feel my hands or feet or flesh at all, like I'm a ghost who wouldn't know the earth was under him if he didn't see it now and again through the mist. But even thought some people would call this frost-pain suffering if they wrote about it to their mams in a letter, I don't, because I know that in half and hour I'm going to be warm, that by the time I get to the main road and am turning on to the wheatfield footpath by the bus stop I'm going to feel as hot as a potbellied stove and as happy as a dog with a tin tail.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner