“When I go to the Boston Marathon now, I have wet shoulders—women fall into my arms crying. They're weeping for joy because running has changed their lives. They feel they can do anything.”

“So, Doc, will I be able to run the Boston Marathon again this year?”

“A novel is something that stands at the end of a lengthy process called writing. It is not a preexisting Platonic form embedded within the writer... I do not have a Boston marathon inside me waiting to get out. The marathon is a peak experience I am rightly entitled to only as the culmination of years of regular training and love of running.”

“I'm the only person I know who has slept through a fire drill. Apparently, I pulled the alarm. Yeah, I sleepwalk. Sometimes I sleep run. I was asleep when I ran the Boston Marathon. I was so tired when I finished that I slept for another sixteen hours.”

“I don't know why it is, but women who have anything to do with Opera, even if they're only studying for it, always appear to run to surplus poundage.”

“You ever notice how long it takes for things to happen when you know they're supposed to happen? My fake Walkman has a built-in alarm, and I set it for two in the morning and wear the headphones to bed, but before you can wake up you have to fall asleep, and I never DO fall asleep because I keep waiting for the alarm to go off.”