What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Author: Haruki Murakami

• Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I

• Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy.

• One runner told of a mantra his older brother, also a runner, had taught him which he’s pondered ever since he began running. Here it is: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

• Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel.

• Marathon runners will understand what I mean. We don’t really care whether we beat any other particular runner. World-class runners, of course, want

• Marathon runners will understand what I mean. We don’t really care whether we beat any other particular runner.

• What’s crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you’ve set for yourself.

• When it comes to other people, you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, but you can’t fool yourself.

• For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor.

• Once I asked an ophthalmologist if anyone’s ever avoided getting farsighted when they got older. He laughed and said, “I’ve never met one yet.”

• Charles River in particular looked totally unchanged. Time had passed, students had come and gone, I’d aged ten years, and there’d literally been a lot of water under the bridge.

• At this point I don’t want to mix music and computers. Just like it’s not good to mix friends and work, and sex.

• By sticking my nose into all sorts of places, I acquired the practical skills I needed to live. Without those ten tough years I don’t think I would have written novels, and even if I’d tried, I wouldn’t have been able to.

• I’m often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves.

• Mick Jagger once boasted that “I’d rather be dead than still singing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m forty-five.” But now he’s over sixty and still singing “Satisfaction.” Some people might find this funny, but not me. When he was young, Mick Jagger couldn’t imagine himself at forty-five. When I was young, I was the same.

• As I mentioned before, competing against other people, whether in daily life or in my field of work, is just not the sort of lifestyle I’m after.

• Other people have their own values to live by, and the same holds true with me. These differences give rise to disagreements, and the combination of these disagreements can give rise to even greater misunderstandings. As a result, sometimes people are unfairly criticized.

• Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

• When I’m criticized unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I’m sure will understand me doesn’t, I go running for a little longer than usual. By running longer it’s like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are.

• don’t think most people would like my personality. There might be a few—very few, I would imagine—who are impressed

• I don’t think most people would like my personality. There might be a few—very few, I would imagine—who are impressed by it, but only rarely would anyone like it.

• My only strength has always been the fact that I work hard and can take a lot physically. I’m more a workhorse than a racehorse.

• The crack of bat meeting ball right on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium. Hilton easily rounded first and pulled up to second. And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel.

• I just couldn’t do something clever like writing a novel while someone else ran the business. I had to give it everything I had. If I failed, I could accept that. But I knew that if I did things halfheartedly and they didn’t work out, I’d always have regrets.

• I never could stand being forced to do something I didn’t want to do at a time I didn’t want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I’d give it everything I had.

• I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society. If something interested me, and I could study it at my own pace and approach it the way I liked, I was pretty efficient at acquiring knowledge and skills.

• The art of translation is a good example. I learned it on my own, the pay-as-you-go method. It takes a lot of time to acquire a skill this way, and you go through a lot of trial and error, but what you learn sticks with you.

• We’d closed the club, so we also decided that from now on we’d meet with only the people we wanted to see and, as much as possible, get by not seeing those we didn’t.

• I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.

• If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn’t matter if nine out of ten didn’t like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders.

• Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business.

• I went to a sports store and purchased running gear and some decent shoes that suited my purpose. I bought a stopwatch, too, and read a beginners’ book on running. This is how you become a runner.

• I’m no great runner, but I’m definitely a strong runner. That’s one of the very few gifts I can be proud of.

• I went around seven times, for a total of 22.4 miles, at a fairly decent pace, and didn’t feel it was that hard. My legs didn’t hurt at all. Maybe I could actually run a marathon, I concluded. It was only later that I found out the hard way that the toughest part of a marathon comes after twenty-two miles.

• Human beings naturally continue doing things they like, and they don’t continue what they don’t like.

• But no matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it’s an activity he doesn’t really care for, he won’t keep it up for long.

• The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.

• Whenever I picture packed trains and endless meetings, this gets me motivated all over again and I lace up my running shoes and set off without any qualms.

• Thirty minutes later I come wide awake. As soon as I wake up, my body isn’t sluggish and my mind is totally clear. This is what they call in southern Europe a siesta.

• The gym where I work out in Tokyo has a poster that says, “Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose.” A painful reality, but a reality all the same.

• Even dogs just lie down in the shade and don’t move a muscle. You have to watch them for a long time before you can figure out whether they’re still alive. That’s how hot it is.

• Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

• Up to nineteen miles I’m sure I can run a good time, but past twenty-two miles I run out of fuel and start to get upset at everything.

• I’m running on sheer willpower, and the finish line doesn’t seem to get any closer. I’m thirsty, but my stomach doesn’t want any more water. This is the point where my legs start to scream.

• training: I never take two days off in a row. Muscles are like work animals that are quick on the uptake. If you carefully increase the load, step by step, they learn to take it.

• Muscles are like work animals that are quick on the uptake. If you carefully increase the load, step by step, they learn to take it.

• Naturally it’s important to take a break sometimes, but in a critical time like this, when I’m training for a race, I have to show my muscles who’s boss. I have to make it clear to them what’s expected. I have to maintain a certain tension by being unsparing, but not to the point where I burn out. These are tactics that all experienced runners learn over time.

• I have to show my muscles who’s boss. I have to make it clear to them what’s expected. I have to maintain a certain tension by being unsparing, but not to

• I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit.

• to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.

• I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.

• Once Halloween is over, winter, like some capable tax collector, sets in, concisely and silently.

• As if pulled in by a magnet, people gather on the banks of the river.

• I go for a time without seeing water, I feel like something’s slowly draining out of me. It’s probably like the feeling a music lover has when, for whatever reason, he’s separated from music for a long time.

• If I go for a time without seeing water, I feel like something’s slowly draining out of me. It’s probably like the feeling a music lover has when, for whatever reason, he’s separated from music for a long time.

• No matter how slow I might run, I wasn’t about to walk. That was the rule. Break one of my rules once, and I’m bound to break many more. And if I’d done that, it would have been next to impossible to finish this race.

• The end of the race is just a temporary marker without much significance. It’s the same with our lives. Just because there’s an end doesn’t mean existence has meaning.

• And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion.

• Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about it is this: That’s life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what’s going on. Like taxes, the tide rising and falling, John Lennon’s death, and miscalls by referees at the World Cup.

• Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it’s been moving ever forward without a moment’s rest. And one of the privileges given to those who’ve avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old.

• In Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, one of the characters, Tom Buchanan, a rich man who’s also a well-known polo player, says, “I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable, but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage.”

• garage out of a stable,

• At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. It isn’t always the case, but from experience I’d say the gloomy reports far outnumber the others.