“He handed me a spreadsheet of his own gear list -- everything extensively tested, accounted for and accurately weighed ... Chris' gear list resembled mine, at a base level. But there was a scientific certainty to his items, listed in precise terms and weighed down to fractions of an ounce."You weigh your chapstick?" I cried out. "Your chapstick?”

“He explained how pushing above his threshold for short bursts of time at the beginning of each hill allowed him to breathe more easily on the long climbs. I nodded enthusiastically and understood little of what he was telling me."How about you?" he asked. "How do you structure your training?""I go until I'm tired," I said. "And then I do it again the next day.""That's probably not very effective," John said.”

“If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list.”

“Vain is your boast in that you have scratched the sole of my foot... A worthless coward can inflict but a light wound. When I wound a man, though I but graze his skin, it is another matter, for my weapon will lay him low. His wife will tear her cheeks out for grief and his children will be fatherless: there he will rot, reddening the earth with his blood, and vultures, not women, will gather round him.”

“They want me to account for my next ten years. Their way, everything in your life turns into an item on a list. Something to accomplish. You get to see how your life looks flattened out.The shortest distance between two points is a timeline, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life.Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.”

“There is no greater fame for a man than that which he wins with his footwork or the skill of his hands.”

“He hands me his shopping list and I lead him through the store in search of the items. Duct tape? Plastic wrap? A hacksaw? Who is this guy, Dexter?”