“It costs so much to be a full human being that few have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.”
Daily Archive for February 10th, 2007
“Running, to me, has always been an intricate juggle of pleasure and pain. I like a side order of suffering with my beauty or I just don’t feel right; splendor without effort seems like cheating and eliminates my enjoyment (a concept that non runners, I’ve noted, don’t often grasp). Winter running takes all the usual dichotomies and enhances them: There’s more pleasure, and there’s more pain. Call me strange, or simply call me a runner.” -Michael Finkel, writer, runner.
“To be a runner anywhere is to come to grips with the elements in a way our distant ancestors would fully understand but most modern civilians probably wouldn’t. We are really out there. And we’re not in vehicles or wearing big coats or carrying umbrellas…. Any runner who has been at it for a while will have war stories, and just getting wet hardly qualifies.”    -John L Parker, runner, author of Once A Runner.
