“In a few minutes I'm going to swim .93 miles, ride a bike 24.8 miles, then run a final 6.2 miles. And what's all that supposed to prove? How is this any different from pouring water in an old pan with a tiny hole in the bottom?”

“I’m going to swim 0.93 miles, ride a bike 24.8 miles, then run a final 6.2 miles. And what’s all that supposed to prove? How is this any different from pouring water in an old pan with a tiny hole in the bottom?”

“Not just beautiful, though — the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me. What I’ve up till now, what I’m going to do — they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart’s pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just the stars — how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about?”

“Ok I'm not so smart I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running and it's the working class that get exploited. What kind revolution is it that just throws out big words that working class people can't understand.Revolution or not the working class will just keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholesI'm not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I'm going to believe in. -- Midori”

“I had no idea what to say. A silence descended on us as sudden as the instant fresh oil is poured into a large frying pan.”

“I go out on the porch and gaze up at the stars twinkling above, the random scattering of millions of stars. Even in a planetarium you wouldn't find as many. Some of them really look big and distinct, like if you reached your hand out intently you could touch them. The whole thing is breathtaking. Not just beautiful though--the stars like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me. What I've done up till now, what I'm going to do--they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart's pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I've never given them more than a passing thought before. Bot just stars--how many other things haven't I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I'll never outrun that awful feeling. (135)”

“The photographer from the magazine, Masao Kageyama, would ride along in the van that accompanied me. He’d take pictures as they drove along. It wasn’t a real race, and there weren’t any water stations, so I’d occasionally stop to get water from the van. The Greek summer is truly brutal, and I knew I’d have to be careful not to get dehydrated. “Mr. Murakami,” Mr. Kageyama said, surprised as he saw me getting ready to run, “you’re not really thinking of running the whole route, are you?”“Of course I am. That’s why I came here.”“Really? But when we do these kinds of projects most people don’t go all the way. We just take some photos, and most of them don’t finish the whole route. So you really are going to run theentire thing?”Sometimes the world baffles me. I can’t believe that people would really do things like that.”