“Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes, that was better in any case, life declined.”

“Ruthless is the temper of royalty; How much better to live among the equals.Let me decline in a safe old age. The very name of the "middle way".”

“At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.”

“A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.”

“With age comes wisdom, with wisdom comes perception, with perception comes how you view life, how you view life comes how you handle life, and how you handle life comes how you will dictate the way you live for the rest of your life.”

“I was convinced that she was about to tell me my card was declined, and assumed Derek wanting to talk later meant he'd soon be telling me our life was declined. Everything, everyone had reached their limits with me.”