“You've never in your life seen a horse run so fast! He's all power-all beauty.”

“He needed so much to weep. All the distrust of life which misfortunes had brought to the little Värmland boy needed tears to wash it away. Distrust that love and joy, beauty and strength blossomed on the earth, distrust in himself, all must go, all did go, for it was Easter; the dead lived and the Spirit of Fasting would never again come into power.”

“Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last."-The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs.”

“What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenhearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.”

“Please, Percy...change your clothes. You smell like you've been run over by an electric horse.”

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn't understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.”