“Beside the road cows are lazily chewing grass. They show zero interest in the runners. They're too busy eating grass to care about all these whimsical people and their nonsensical activities. And for their part the runners don't have the leisure to pay attention to what the cows are up to, either.”

“Is it Chance, mere circumstanceThat man eats cow eats grass eats soiland then man dies, and when he liesto the soil he does return?”

“At paces that might stun and dismay the religious jogger, the runners easily kept up all manner of chatter and horseplay. When they occasionally blew by a huffing fatty or an aging road runner, they automatically toned down the banter to avoid overwhelming, to preclude the appearance of show boating (not that they slowed in the slightest). They in fact respected these distant cousins of the spirit, who, among all people, had some modicum of insight into their own days and ways. But the runners resembled them only in the sense that a puma resembles a pussy cat. It is the difference between stretching lazily on the carpet and prowling the jungle for fresh red meat.”

“A painting is more than the sum of the parts,” he would tell me, and then go on to explain how the cow itself is just a cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and flowers, and the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light, but put them all together and you’ve got magic.”

“No matter what plan you choose or how fast or far you go, you’re a runner. If you combine walking with running, you’re a runner. If you run twice a week, you’re a runner. If you view yourself as a runner, you will become a better one. If you’ve never run & want to become one, you can be a runner. All it takes is interest (and a good pair of running shoes).”

“Have you ever watched the jet cars race on the boulevard?...I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly...If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! He'd say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows.”