“A typical race morning usually starts out looking like a scene from a zombie movie: individuals or pairs of people walking down a deserted street, all headed in the same direction.... Inevitably, regardless of the weather, U2's "Beautiful Day" streams out of loudspeakers.”

“And then there's the perverse joy of subtly working in references to marathon training in daily life, say at the post office or while waiting outside my first-graders' classrooms at the end of the school day.”

“For the benefit of those half-dozen people who will see a name like Gwillim and put this book down in order to go look it up to see where it comes from — it is the Welsh version of William”

“When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.”

“People usually respond better to someone they can relate to. Statues are kind of hard to like.”

“Telephone books are, like dictionaries, already out of date the moment they are printed....”

“I find myself subject to the entire range of emotions and reactions that a great book will call forth from its reader. I chuckle, laugh out loud, smile wistfully, cringe, widen my eyes in surprise, and even feel sadness--all from the neatly ordered rows of words and their explanations. All of the human emotions and experiences are right here in this dictionary, just as they would be in any fine work of literature. They just happen to be alphabetized.”